Terminal Emulators

GROUP TEST TERMINAL EMULATORS

TERMINAL EMULATORS GROUP TEST Marco Fioretti opened more shells than you want to know to help you discover what terminal emulator is right for you.

On Test Terminal emulators Relics of a long-gone era, or effective tools? Eterm URL www.eterm.org erminal emulators are because they are like baby Version 0.9.6 rectangles on a screen that gestures: whatever you want, be it a Licence BSD Tlet users communicate with document on your drive or a movie The original emulator of the local computer, or a remote one, from the internet, you point your the Enlightenment window much like in a generic chat session: finger at it, just like you did to get manager: is it still up to you type some commands as text, toys when you were a toddler. the task? and the computer answers by The obvious problem is that displaying other text, or launching gesture-based interaction is the Guake another program. All GNU/Linux most effective way to go in many URL www.guake.org distributions include, or let you cases (think drawing software) but Version 0.4.4 install very easily, a range of not in all ones. The reason is that Licence GPLv2+ An “on-demand” terminal emulators. you can only “work” with what was emulator that hides in Such interfaces can, however, already visible on screen. Learning your system dock and look boring or intimidating, to talk is a daunting, apparently only opens when called. especially for people who always pointless task for babies, but there used touchscreen or mouse-based is a reason why all those who can, Konsole computing environments. Do they eventually do it: it’s the only way to URL still make sense in 2014? explain exactly what you want, or to http://konsole.kde.org The answer of this Group Test is provide a complex description of a Version 4.12.4 a resounding yes. It does make problem. Terminal emulators Licence GPLv2 and GFDL sense to know terminal emulators, provide access to the same The ofﬁcial terminal and the available choices in this communication system used emulator for the KDE field, for a very simple reason: among grownup humans: speech. desktop environment. mouse or touchscreen interfaces That’s why we’re delighted to Terminator are gratifying and easy to learn present you with five great choices. URL http:// gnometerminator. Graphical interfaces are easy to learn blogspot.com/p/ “ introduction.html because they are like baby gestures.” Version 0.97 Licence GPLv2 Ascetic power. THE CRUCIAL CRITERIA We wanted to show you how many This, and the fact that we only have Terminology different choices of terminal emulators space for five products, are the only URL you have under Linux, including some you reasons why we left a good emulator www.enlightenment.org may have never discovered otherwise. We like Gnome-terminal out. It’s included also wanted to give you choices as easy in the basic versions of (at least) Version 0.4.0 as possible to install and try. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and all their Licence BSD Therefore, we looked for emulators cousins. Besides, it has all the main Made for Enlightenment, that are rich in features and easy to features discussed in these pages, and it conceals a hidden install, normally available as binary is somewhat hidden in one of them. In trove of features. packages, but that are not the default other words, you really have no excuses ones in the most popular Linux distros. to not try it at least once.

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Multitasking Installation and Is it easy to manage many terminals simultaneously? configuration

Is it complicated to get these emulators up and running?

ue to the criteria with which they were chosen, none of the emulators Dconsidered for this Group Test should give you any trouble. Unless you use some little-known distribution, you should easily find binary packages with the software manager of your GNU/Linux system. In any case, here are a pair of issues that are worth mentioning. The first is that, while emulators are small programs, they may consume much more disk space than you expected, especially if you install them as packages. Konsole, for example, will bring with itself most of KDE, even if you had no plan to ever use any other part of that desktop. Guake and Terminator may do the same with parts of Gnome. Eterm and Terminology are both products of Konsole, Terminator and Terminology can shuffle terminals in more ways than you’ll ever need. the Enlightenment window manager community. They have the same “problem” as y now, you know that terminal right-click in any sub-window and select the other three – their dependency on emulators enable interaction with “New”, to open a new terminal exactly over Enlightenment libraries and other Bcomputers more or less like the already existing one. Moving from one components. However, they will generally written speech. As it happens in other terminal of the same sub-window to consume less memory, and much less space, realms of life, it is often necessary to carry another is easy to do but hard to spot. than their competitors. on, or at least keep open, several When you create more terminals in one A final word of advice: depending on your conversations in parallel. Four of our sub-window, the emulator activates a very disto, you may find that some minor feature of emulators make it very easy to do so. The small terminal switcher in its upper-right an emulator doesn’t work as documented exception is Eterm, at least in the version corner: the default colour scheme of (sound effects, background configuration and tested on Fedora 20. Guake has tabs, like Terminator makes it hard to see, but you similar) if you run it under a different window Konsole, but with fewer settings. can just click there to move from terminal manager or desktop environment than that for The tabs in Konsole work very much like to terminal. which it was primarily designed. those of Firefox and other web browsers. Terminator is so flexible from this point You can right-click on the name of each of view that if you find yourself using all its tab to close it, rename it or move it to a functions together… it probably means separate window. We also like the you’re working too much. First, there are possibility to automatically assign a both tabs and multiple levels of vertical or different colour to each new tab. horizontal window splitting. Second, there A dedicated panel in the Konsole is another feature that is even cooler, even configuration interface (Settings > if many people will find no use for it. The Configure > TabBar) lets you hide the Tab coloured rectangle in the left-hand corner Bar, put it on top or bottom of the window of the Terminator status bar opens a and place in it dedicated buttons to add or menu in which you can define groups of The software managers of all the main Linux close tabs. Our preferred function of that terminals, so that everything you type in distros include all the terminal tested here. panel, however, is the one that sets where one of them is broadcast to all the others. all new tabs should appear, that is, at the VERDICT end of the bar, or next to the currently VERDICT Eterm Guake active tab. Eterm Konsole Guake Terminology can split its own window Terminator Konsole Terminology Terminator and each sub-window both vertically and Terminology horizontally. In addition to that, you can

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Customisation General behaviour What makes a good terminal? Can you live with them day-to-day? large part of what we think of as settings of your distribution, as well as the or us, a good terminal must have at the user interface of a terminal configuration file of your shell, to make least these characteristics: Aemulator is actually the result of everything look and work just as you like: Fconfigurable keybindings for all the its interaction with other, more or less prompts, history, escape sequences, audio main operations, ways to define custom independent programs; specifically the or visual alarm bells are just the main commands, and support for automation. The individual commands that we run inside it. examples of what we mean. Keep this in latter feature consists of being able to No matter how you tweak the emulator mind, when thinking to how to use each of memorise and load, automatically or on user itself, you may have to adjust the locale these programs. demand, complex combinations of many terminals, each with its own settings. Konsole and Terminator do practically Eterm everything we just mentioned, through Eterm was conceived as the “Enlightened redesigned for 2014, and we mean this as assorted plugins and support for user-defined terminal emulator for the X Window a compliment. You can customise every profiles. A profile is a set of configuration System”. It seems well suited both for detail of how Eterm looks and works, and parameters for a single terminal, which is expert users who want a lean and mean tune its memory consumption with given a name (eg “root profile” or “web server terminal, and for beginners looking for command line switches. If you have the profile”) so that it can be loaded automatically, something fast, but with an unusual (shall patience, that is: we hope we’re wrong, but when the emulator is launched, or on demand. we say “vintage”?) look and feel. Working the default looks and strain on the eyes of The point of profiles is to make your in Eterm feels like running an Xterm (the Eterm doesn’t seem to encourage terminal emulator do as much housekeeping main Unix terminal emulator of the 80s) newbies, which is a shame. as possible for you, by running predefined commands every time you load them. Let’s assume that you always need to have three terminals open at all times: one for checking email, one for working remotely on your web server and one to execute all other commands and generic scripts at the prompt. You can Eterm has a pleasant define an email profile that, all by itself, before vintage look, and enough you even see the window, starts the Mutt visual parameters to set email client; a web one, which automatically that it takes time to find connects via SSH to your server; and a generic the best combination. profile for everything else. Each profile may also load a completely different configuration. Konsole and Terminator can also split their Guake window in any combination of sub-windows. The other emulators of this Group Test all Guake sits in your system dock and Terminator makes it quite easy to save these aim to make long terminal sessions as appears (or disappears) in a flash “layouts”, with different profiles for each efficient and comfortable as possible. whenever you press the F12 key. By terminal. All its keybindings can be Guake, instead, is “a drop-down terminal default, due to this design choice, Guake is reconfigured, or individually disabled. for Gnome”, designed to be invisible, configured to “Stay on Top”, but you can The other emulators have fewer features, except when you need a prompt quickly, disable this behaviour in the General tab of but still enough that it is impossible to mention but just for a few minutes. That’s probably its Properties window. A KDE version of them all. Eterm has search and run boxes, plus why you can set the height of the Guake the same emulator is available at many scrolling options. Terminology provides window, but not its width. Once started, http://yakuake.kde.org. configurable “helpers” – applications to open all kinds of files, showing them inline if possible. Besides tabs, in Guake you can easily set the default interpreter for your terminals to bash, nologin and several versions of Python.

VERDICT Eterm Guake Konsole Setting an image background Terminator Terminology in all the tabs of Guake is a snap. Whether it’s worth it is another question…

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Konsole It’s an obvious thing to say, but we’re going However, even if Konsole were the only to say it anyway: Konsole works and feels KDE component you’ll ever launch in your Flexibility just like the rest of KDE. If you have the computer, it would still work and present time and patience to try all its options, and itself in the most discreet way possible. Bend them to your will! configure them to your taste, you will find Clean menus, bookmarks, readable fonts yourself with a nice, very powerful and still out of the box… Konsole has many erminal emulators can do lots of unobtrusive tool. features you will like. things that you may not expect of Tthem, or be used in environments different from your everyday GNU/Linux distribution. By definition, this is a sector in which one is forced to compare apples with oranges, so please don’t take the corresponding rating too seriously. The default looks, fonts and other setting of Konsole may Eterm is at its best inside the Enlightenment seem dull, but they are well window manager. Its “auto mode”, for example, thought-out and don’t get in gets the images to use for scrollbars directly the way. from Enlightenment, and lets the Window manager draw them. At the same time, if you compile and install Escreen code yourself (see Terminator the Eterm man page for details), Eterm will get The Terminator home page greets visitors arrange terminals inside Terminator are something that is trickier to achieve in its with the half pompous, half cryptic slogan the most flexible of the bunch. And if you competitors: an interface between the “The robot future of terminals”. After just a stop liking a layout, you can just drag and emulator itself and the screen program, to few hours of usage, you see why for drop each sub-window as you please. The manage multiple (local or remote) terminal yourself. Technically speaking, this Group Broadcast feature does look a bit sessions via Eterm buttons and menus. program is a tool to host multiple Gnome like those totally unrealistic Hollywood Being part of Enlightenment can take Eterm terminals in one window, as efficiently as mockups of computer interfaces, but to places that may be much more difficult to possible. The ways in which you can nobody’s forcing you to use it. reach for the other emulators. Enlightenment is much more popular for embedded Linux applications than the environments for which the other terminals were designed (with the possible exception of Konsole, if used inside Plasma Active systems). Of course, what we just said for Eterm also applies to Terminology, Besides organising terminals in tabs and sub-windows, which besides X11 also works in Wayland and Terminator makes it easy to in the basic Linux framebuffer. Other features control whole groups of them, of Terminology that, in certain scenarios, may in broadcast mode. be useful to both beginners and power users are its ability to display the content of links inline and to smoothly reflow text when the Terminology window is resized. Terminology can use video clips as usual ones, but also quite efficient and Other users prefer the Konsole functions to background, has a themable visual bell interesting. Besides looks, you get print the content of the window as it was (the window flash when it wants to tell you splittable tabs and selection of rectangular before the execution of the last command, or something), and it can display some blocks of texts (a godsend for bug to save it in plain text or HTML format. graphics formats inline. reporting and text processing). Email Speaking of flexibility, here is one last thing Every minute spent using this terminal addresses, URLs and file paths are you may like to know: in KDE, and likely in reminds you that there is a whole desktop detected automatically, so copying and other environments as well, you can tell any environment pretty different from the pasting them anywhere is a snap. independent window to become a tab of another window. This makes it possible to run all your favourite terminals (each with its own tabs, sub-windows, etc) in just one window.

VERDICT Eterm No menus, no buttons, Guake nothing in sight: Terminology Konsole Terminator couldn’t look more spartan, Terminology but its snappy control panel is just one click away.

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ll the emulators we tested can only for your Eterm instances, an image have graphic, more or less as big as your desktop, but different Atransparent backgrounds. Now, from the wallpaper. The result, as the if we didn’t think that looks matter, we Eterm man page puts it, is “especially wouldn’t have devoted a big box to keen” if you open several Eterms with them, so do yourself a favour and don’t the same viewport. waste much time with fancy backgrounds. Back in the 90s, when Why be boring? KDE and GNOME were born, such The Terminology mantra is “Why backgrounds were cool, maybe even Should Terminals be boring?” In our necessary, to prove that Linux was not opinion, the configuration panels of Testing fonts, backgrounds and themes in Terminology is necessarily dull. Today, they just make Terminology are the best-looking of the so easy and fun that you may forget to do any work. text harder to read. group. Setting fonts and font sizes, a The Eterm defaults are the worst critical feature, is easy and fun, even if Terminator, even the thickness of the from this point of view. Every new there are many options. Terminology border between terminals in the same Eterm pops up with a different also has a cursor that flashes along as window is configurable. background image, which often seems you type, but it manages to do it Guake has all the important visual chosen just to assault your eyes. without being irritating. configuration options, and it offers the Besides, the Eterm menus only give There is not much to say about the ability to make scrolling happen either three choices of font size (normal, other competitors, but don’t take that when text output has filled the screen, smaller, bigger) and too many choices as a critique. The graphical or only when you hit some key (which is for brightness, contrast and gamma. configuration interfaces of Terminator the default). Luckily, you can force Eterm to always and Konsole seem to us the best look exactly as you want with compromise between ease of use and VERDICT command line switches. number of options. Both emulators let Eterm Guake That said, if you do like image you zoom in or out, that is, set different Konsole Terminator backgrounds for text, try the Eterm font size in each tab or sub-window, by Terminology “viewport” mode: it sets as background, just pressing Ctrl+ or Ctrl-. In Documentation What should I know, and where can I find it?

ocumentation is a tricky issue, man page. At the opposite end of the as far as terminal emulators are scale we have Konsole: in addition to a Dconcerned. That’s why it handy “What’s this?” function, one click deserves its own section in these in its Help menu opens the Konsole pages. The issue we are talking about is section of the KDE handbook. There related to the very nature of terminal you’ll find almost everything you need The Konsole handbook, reachable through the help menu, emulators. The right choice of terminal to know about this terminal in simple is clear and complete. make a big difference in how productive language, including an introduction to you can be. However, by definition, any how to make scripts interact with reading, sources of documentation for program of this kind is just like a Konsole via Dbus. Eterm are its FAQ and Technical connector to the tools that hold the real Terminator only has two man pages: Reference at www.eterm.org. The latter power: shells and other command one for the configuration options (man document is the only one that explains interpreters. In other words, how much terminator_conﬁg) and one for the how to configure settings such as you can do with an emulator depends command line switches. The interface, escape sequences. first and foremost from how familiar however, is simple enough that this is you are with those other programs. seldom a problem. VERDICT This said, let’s look at what the A click on the question mark in the Eterm Guake programs of this group test offer when bar of an Eterm window opens the man Konsole Terminator it comes to documentation. Guake page of this terminal, in another Eterm Terminology seems to have nothing but a very terse window. Other useful, if not mandatory

58 www.linuxvoice.com TERMINAL EMULATORS GROUP TEST OUR VERDICT Terminator f you use the command line old computers, where every CPU just to launch an occasional cycle counts. In all other cases, it Terminator: easy configuration interface, endless possibilities. Iscript a few times a week, has little that you can’t find in the practically any terminal emulator others, in a more usable package. 1st Terminator would do. As a matter of fact, you Terminology is perfect for people Licence GPLv2 Version 0.97 should probably attach that script who want many terminals but get to an icon or menu entry of your bored by always looking at the http://gnometerminator.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html desktop, rather than firing up a same stuff: its configuration panel Terminator is fast, full of features, has the most flexible layouts terminal just to type its name. makes experimenting with colours, and is easy to configure. It also looks good without any fiddling. In all other cases, which on Linux fonts and graphic styles so easy means “basically always, if you that it may kill your productivity. 2nd Konsole want to fully exploit the power of Konsole (as you’d expect from a Licence GPLv2 and GFDL Version 4.12.4 this operating system” things are KDE application) demands some much different. work to make it behave just as http://konsole.kde.org/ Having several terminals you’d like, but it is powerful and well The official KDE terminal, perfectly integrated with that desktop, but great even on its own. Not flashy, but solid and complete. “Terminator is not a fashion icon, but is 3rd Terminology good looking, fast, and above all flexible.” Licence BSD Version 0.4.0

regularly open, each for one pre-configured enough that most www.enlightenment.org If you need power, but can’t do without an original look and feel, different task (eg system people will be happy with it by just Terminology makes it easy to get just what you want. monitoring, file searches, web opening more tabs. server administration) is not Terminator is not a fashion icon, something that only top-notch IT but is good looking, at least as fast 4th Eterm professionals must do – it’s for as the others (on medium-powered Licence BSD Version 0.9.6 everyone. That’s where a terminal computers, at least) and, above all, www.eterm.org emulator that can bundle, flexible! If the terminal emulator of Not needed in Enlightenment, now that we have Terminology, preconfigure and run all those your dreams, the one that would but it’s still powerful and fast. shells, makes a big difference. make you work happy, looks like a If you are in the “occasional patchwork quilt, be assured that script” category, go for Guake: Terminator can look like that, with 5th Guake besides being made to order for relatively little effort. This, plus Licence GPLv2+ Version 0.4.4 that use case, it looks good and still custom commands and other www.guake.org has tabs and other useful features. things we already mentioned, make Guake ca,e last simply because it is more specialisedthan the Eterm may be the best option of Terminator the winner of this others, but is a great tool all the same. when you need lots of terminals on Group Test YOU MAY ALSO WISH TO TRY… The terminals presented here are, in our There are many more projects that, while Google Chrome. Finally, we’re keeeping an opinion, among the most interesting ones not really ready for prime time yet, may make eye on Final Term. This aims to redefine the that are available today on Linux. This doesn’t things much more interesting in a few nature and task of a terminal emulator, with mean you should ignore the others, of course. months. Some are terminals that run inside features like smart command completion, Use this Group Test as a guide to how to any browser, like Anyterm, AjaxTerm or Shell and above all semantic text menus, which evaluate them, instead. Among traditional In A Box. Then there is TermKit, which is a recognise what the piece of terminal output terminals, for example, you may try desktop application, but running inside the you have selected is, and only display actions lightweight apps like lxterminal or wterm. same WebKit rendering engine used by compatible with it. Stay tuned!