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. 54 www.linuxvoice.com TERMINAL EMULATORS GROUP TEST 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 www.linuxvoice.com 55 GROUP TEST TERMINAL EMULATORS 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.