Quake style terminals
9 January 2007
When I first used Linux I just had the terminal, then I got given a copy of Redhat which came with Gnome by default, and since then I have never really strayed from it. Had I been given disks with KDE on then I would probably be still using that instead. So I find it interesting to see 'how the other half live', since people who have KDE do things differently.
Just before Christmas break, I saw Andrew doing some frantic programming. In the process, KDE windows were flying everywhere over his ibook screen.
One interesting phenomena was that there seemed to be this copy of Vi rolling up and down the screen. I assumed it was some Beryl plugin but actually he was using a special xterm called YaKuake.
What is an xterm?
If I am using a system with a Graphical User Interface (GUI), then there is no time at which I am without a terminal window ('xterm' in my slang usage) or two. These days you can use Linux completely without ever using the command line if you want. However, I do not want, I personally I am more productive with it than without it, that is one reason why my Linux blog is called "Command Line Warriors".
Here I look at two fun xterms that you might want to play with, one KDE based and one Gnome based. They should be available from your normal package manager but you can also download the source directly if you prefer.
YaKuake!
If you ever played the game Quake then you will get the idea instantly, YaKuake is a terminal emulator that it you press F12, rolls down from the top of the screen ready for use, and if you press F12 again it will completely disappear again.
This simple trick is amazingly helpful. Although the name is absolutely impossible to remember, the app is very well polished. You just keep the app running and you can slide it up and down whenever you want to run a command.
Here is a screenshot in action (click to enlarge):
- `.. image:: http://commandline.org.uk/images/posts/gnome/yakuake-small.png
-
alt: YaKuake - click to enlarge
`_
Tilda
Tilda is follows the same concept but it is based heavily on Gnome- Terminal. It is a little less polished than YaKuake and the defaults are not so good. This is soon solved by choosing some nice settings for yourself. I set mine to full-screen horizontally, white on black and the font to 10 point monospace). However, it has one excellent feature, you can have more than one tab. The magic key is F1 this time, and this can be set to almost whatever you want.
Here is a screenshot in action (click to enlarge):
`_
I like these apps because they are one answer to the question of how to switch easily between one way of working (typing commands) and a another way of working (menus and buttons). Both applications give you two modes, one for the command line and one for the graphical shell.
You can achieve a similar effect with the Cube Workspace in Beryl and Compiz, but using one of these applications requires significantly less system resources.
So give it a go, you might like them as much as I have.
1 Daniel says...
Oh man, YaKuake is so sweet. Thanks for the tip!
Posted at 12:42 a.m. on January 9, 2007
2 nikkie says...
Thanks! I've got tilda set up as I like it, and it's a welcome additional to my toolset.
I like the transparency. :-D
Posted at 7:28 a.m. on January 9, 2007
3 Jonathan Brodsky says...
If you are on os x, there is also visor: http://docs.blacktree.com/visor/visor
Posted at 8:24 p.m. on January 30, 2007
4 eric says...
For OSX, there's Visor: http://docs.blacktree.com/visor/visor
Posted at 8:44 p.m. on January 30, 2007
5 Gregory Brown says...
Neat stuff.
I prefer my entire window manager to behave like this, so I use dwm. :) http://dwm.suckless.org/
Posted at 11 p.m. on January 30, 2007
6 Phil says...
This is actually really easy to script on your own with a terminal emulator of your choice using the wmctrl utility. You don't get the fancy slide animations, but all the functionality is there:
http://technomancy.us/blog/post/65
Posted at 4:36 p.m. on January 31, 2007
7 Tex says...
Thanks...I've been looking for this for a month now (I had Tilda on my old laptop, but couldn't remember the name). You made my day!
Posted at 10:52 p.m. on February 7, 2007