Terminal Emulators

Introduction

I work a lot at the console level, I even lauch some programs directly from there, and I know there are a lot of users like me.

Somtimes I also open two or even three terminals to monitor differente processes on the same machine or even on different PCs using ssh connection.

The use of less is really useful while doing that, the gnome-console or Konsole from KDE are really useful because of their tabbed terminals, you can switch from one to another just pressing alt+[number of terminal].

But, sometimes I want to have a look at two or more screens at the same time, if these are also your needs, you can use either

• QuadKonsole or
• Multi-Gnome-Terminal

Multi-Gnome-Terminal

Installation for Debian or Ubuntu

apt-get install multi-gnome-terminal

You can call it from the menu, (Applications -> System_Tools -for Ubuntu users-), or enter at a console:

multi-gnome-terminal &

Once open you can click on "new term" and decide to open this on a new tab, or split your current window, either vertical or horizontal.

Under Settings menu you can change the colors, and other characteristics, both for TABs and Window.

The great thing about this is that you can watch at different monitor tools while doing a specific task, like open a window with htop while compiling, as you may see on this screenshot.

You can open as many terminals as you want, actually I do not know the limit, but I think your screen will have limit before multi-gnome-terminal could reach its.

QuadKonsole

Installation

I did not found a repository for this software, so I had to compile it, this is kind of the same as multi-gnome-terminal, but focused on KDE.

I like them both, maybe multi-gnome-terminal could have some more insteresting features, but I like the view of QuadKonsole more.

I found no way to change the size of the windows under quadKonsole, there should be a way.

Well, lets go to the installation, I did this on Ubuntu, therefore on Gnome, so I needed lots of dependencies that maybe KDE users will not need.

sudo apt-get install xlibs-dev libqt3-headers libqt3-compat-headers libqt3-mt libqt3-mt-dev kde-devel

Create a directory for it

mkdir $HOME/quadconsole

cd $HOME/quadconsole

Then download the tarbal from.

wget http://nomis80.org/quadkonsole/quadkonsole-2.0.2.tar.bz2

tar xvjf quadkonsole-2.0.2.tar.bz2

cd quadkonsole-2.0.2

./configure

make && make install

Now you can start enjoying your QuadKonsole software,

start it with:

/usr/local/kde/bin/quadkonsole

If you want more terminal emulators than the default four, enter:

/usr/local/kde/bin/quadkonsole --rows 3 --columns 2

As you may see in the screenshot below, I have running a ping, htop, and centerICQ to keep an eye to the task running on my server, to my chat sessions, and working on the terminal emulator.

Other cool terminal emulators

Yakuake

This is a scroll down terminal emulator, once turned on, you just need to press F12 to use it, it will appear from the top or your screen, once you are done with it, just press F12 again, and it will hide again.

Installation

apt-get install yakuake

Eterm

Eterm, one with some good features, specially for your eyes, as it comes with lots of backgrounds, and you can adjust the contrast and the brightness of the windows, to better see their contents.

Installation

apt-get install eterm

Just remeber that to run it, you need to enter Eterm, with "E" in capital letters,

Eterm