Terminator- A Linux terminal emulator to support multiple re-sizable terminal panels in single window

Each Desktop environment has their own terminal emulator app to interact with system through commands. In many reason, you may feel its not suitable for you as its offering the stand features and doesn’t offer robust future such as Tilix, Tilda, Terminator, Upterm, etc,.

What is Linux Terminal Emulator?

A Linux terminal emulator is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. It allows the user to access text terminal and all other applications such as text user interface and command line interface. It’s running either on the local machine or remote machine through ssh.

What is Terminator?

Terminator is an advanced, powerful and feature-rich terminal emulator for Linux and Unix operating systems which supports multiple re-sizable terminal panels in one window. It allow users to create multiple terminals in one window and arrange terminals in grids. One of the important feature which I noticed in terminator is broadcast keystrokes to a group or to all groups (like if you type something in terminal 1 the same has been sent to terminal 2 and 3 as well). It was written in Python and based on GNOME Terminal.

It’s highly configurable so, you can change other properties such as fonts, fonts color, title color, size, terminal fonts color, terminal background color, and terminal shape, etc.,

Features

  • Arrange terminals as per your wish
  • Arrange terminals in a grid
  • Drag and drop re-ordering of terminals
  • Lots of keyboard shortcuts
  • Save multiple layouts and profiles via GUI preferences editor
  • Simultaneous typing to arbitrary groups of terminals
  • Terminator provides you with a find function so you can search for text and regular expressions within your terminal
  • Horizontal & Vertical scrolling
  • Tabs supported

How to install Terminator in Linux

It can be installed through distribution package manager as it’s available in the default repository.

For Debian/Ubuntu, use APT-GET Command or APT Command to install terminator.

$ sudo apt install terminator

Alternatively, add following PPA to install the very latest Terminator on Ubuntu based distribution.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome-terminator
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install terminator

For Fedora, use DNF Command to install terminator.

$ sudo dnf install terminator

For CentOS/RHEL systems, enable RPMForge Repository and use YUM Command to install Terminator.

$ sudo yum install terminator

For Arch Linux, use Pacman Command to install terminator.

$ sudo pacman -S terminator

For openSUSE, use Zypper Command to install terminator.

$ sudo zypper in terminator

How to launch & Use Terminator

After successful installation, launch Terminator either from Application menu or via terminal. I have added possible screen shot with details for better understanding.

After terminator launch, you will get the similar output like below.

Multiple panes : I have split the terminal in horizontal and vertical by clicking vertical & horizontal options on the context menu.

Screen shot with Transparency.

Screen shot with Search box.

Have a look into default hotkeys which helps you to improve Tilda usage.

  • F11 : Toggle fullscreen
  • Ctrl+Shift+O : Split terminals horizontally
  • Ctrl+Shift+E : Split terminals vertically
  • Ctrl+Shift+W : Close current Panel
  • Ctrl+Shift+T : Open new tab
  • Shift+Ctrl+s : Hide/Show Scrollbar
  • Ctrl+Shift+f : Search for a Keyword
  • Ctrl+Shift+w : Close the Current Terminal
  • Ctrl+Shift+R : Reset Terminal
  • Super+g : Group all Terminal into one
  • Ctrl+Shift+q : Quit the Terminator

How to customize Terminator

Terminator highly configurable through GUI. It has six tabs, each has many options which allows user to customize however they want. Bring terminator configuration from context menu.

  • Global : In global tab, we can customize window behavior, appearance, terminal title-bar color, mouse focus, broadcast, and tab position, etc.
  • Profiles : The profiles tab, allows you to customize cursor shape & foreground color, foreground and background color and palette color, transparent background, and scrolling.
  • Layouts : In layouts tab, we can add or remove new layouts as per our wish.
  • Keybindings : Keybindings tab will display available hotkeys for terminator.
  • Plugins : Plugins tab allows user to enable available plugins.
  • About : About tab will print about terminator.

About Magesh Maruthamuthu

Love to play with all Linux distribution

View all posts by Magesh Maruthamuthu

2 Comments on “Terminator- A Linux terminal emulator to support multiple re-sizable terminal panels in single window”

  1. My favorite features of Terminator are the plugins. The “notify on silence” and “notify on activity” are really useful.

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