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I was wonder what people think some of the best Linux terminal emulator, and what features people look for in a terminal? I'm currently using xterm, which is a little sparse on features, except for being lightweight.

What are some of the coolest term out there?

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closed as not constructive by Daniel Beck, random♦ Aug 9 '11 at 13:29

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8 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

I use yakuake or if you want a gtk option for gnome, tilde. Nothing beats the ease of a dropdown terminal IMO

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Tilde is a poor replacement for Yakuake, even if you do use Gnome (which I do). – supercheetah Dec 9 '09 at 13:29
i feel so too. However i felt it really for the potential user to decide what works best – Journeyman Geek Dec 9 '09 at 20:59
I wish I could up-vote this answer more than once, YaKuake bound to the tilde key is pure joy – SleighBoy Dec 10 '09 at 7:05
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up vote 6 down vote

I like gnome-terminal and guake, although gnome-terminal seems to be a little "heavy" on resources but I run it on an old T20 and it's running fine. Guake is similar to Yakuake and Tilda that, as previously mentioned by "The Journeyman geek", is a drop-down terminal.

Gnome-terminal, as well as Konsole, has a lot of possible configurations from the GUI but, in the case I was really out of RAM and/or CPU, I would use a simple tty, invoked with ALT+CTRL+F1 (and back to X with ALT+CTRL+F7).

What you will choose? :D

Regards

EDIT: your question arose one of my ancient eye-candy need: a terminal as a desktop background! and I found this: hope you like it!

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up vote 6 down vote

Terminator is definately a worthy contestant. alt text

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+1, Terminator is my terminal emulator of choice as well. Lots of features like tabs, split windows, and lots of other stuff. – Wuffers Oct 23 '10 at 23:58
@Mr.Man Split Windows > Tabs - You can't see 5 tabs at once – new123456 Oct 25 '10 at 1:32
Confusingly, there are two terminal emulators that go by the name terminator, and the one in your screen shot is not the one you linked to. This is also the first question in the FAQ of the site you linked to. You meant to link here instead. – spatz Dec 10 '11 at 23:56
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up vote 5 down vote

I use lxterminal. It has most if not all of the features of the heavier terminals, but is very lightweight and fast. Most notably, it supports tabbing and background transparency. Changing settings like the color scheme or font is very easy.

lxterminal screenshot

(note that by default, the tab bar is at the top)

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up vote 3 down vote

xterm is one of the best terminal emulators in terms of emulation correctness. if you're looking for extra eye-candy or fancy gui features like tabs, graphical preferences windows, etc -- go for konsole. though as far as i know its emulation sucks compared to xterm. and last time i tried, it had several very annoying bugs.

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Tabs are obsolete with tmux. – new123456 Jul 23 '11 at 16:11
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up vote 3 down vote

No matter what terminal you choose (I use xterm and/or aterm but mostly putty on Windows or terminal on mac) you must combine it with a login script that reattaches to your last session of screen. I personally have sh set as my shell and use its .profile to start screen in reattach or create mode, which then has bash as its default shell in its screenrc file, along with a useful status line and other defaults. Bash uses its .bashrc instead of the .profile if it exists, which it should for this to work non-circularly.

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up vote 2 down vote

I like rxvt since it's even more lightweight than xterm. Since I tend to have tons of open terminals open (I mean, isn't that what window managers are for?), it makes sense to go with the lightest I can find. Combined with screen or tmux, I have all the features I need in a terminal program.

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I use urxvt - unicode version of rxvt :) They're all great – nXqd Jan 13 '11 at 18:53
A mrxvt user here - nice, light, and tabbed. – new123456 May 31 '11 at 2:05
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up vote 1 down vote

I prefer aterm in transparent borderless mode. What this means is that I have a single terminal screen always on the desktop. I then use screen to switch between sessions.

Go ahead and check this out for a guide:

http://linuxreviews.org/software/x11-terms/aterm/

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This link doesn't work – oneself Dec 10 '09 at 15:03
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Just tried it and it works for me... Sorry for any inconvenience. – Devon Dec 11 '09 at 2:20
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