Terminator
Version: 0.97-2 Web: http://bit.ly/GnomeTerminator
We previously covered amazing tips, tricks, workarounds and special software that enable modern computing without the graphical user interface [ SeeEscapetheGUI,p52, LXF197]. But if you’re not ready for such a radical change why not stay with a GUI, but adopt some best practices for a minimalistic, procrastination-free workspace? Terminator, for instance, is a small application for efficiently filling a large screen area with terminals. It can be used to have multiple terminals in one window and use key bindings to switch between them.
While applications like Tmux organise workspace solely in text mode, Terminator does a similar job but runs like an ordinary GTK application, encapsulating terminals inside a single window. The rationale for choosing Terminator is that you can track several command-line interfaces at a time while still running a browser or other desktop applications in the usual manner.
Terminator works as a GTK wrapper around Gnome GUI components and Python-VTE (VTE is a terminal widget used by Gnome Terminal). Recent versions of Terminator now support GTK3 along with the legacy GTK2. On startup, Terminator looks like just another Terminal emulator, only with an extra red top bar and a menu button on its left side. Managing terminals is bound to certain keystrokes, which you’re supposed to learn (or check using $ man terminator ). For instance, using Ctrl+Shift+o splits terminals horizontally, Ctrl+Shift+e splits vertically, Ctrl+Shift+f searches within current terminal and using Ctrl+Shift+<arrow> rearranges a current terminal in respective direction.
You can switch between terminals by clicking on one with the mouse. The current terminal is always indicated with the red bar at the top. The menu buttons hide some advanced features, like terminal grouping and broadcasting, and you can type a command in several terminals simultaneously, which is very cool!
“Type a command in several terminals simultaneously.”