Terminator - An App to Run Multiple Terminal Emulators in the same Window in GNU/Linux!

The real power of the GNU/Linux operating system lies in the command line interface. This I think is something that's universally true to all operating systems in the past (including MS Windows) but little by little most have switched to GUI desktop versions since they're the most user friendliest.

But the command line, especially in GNU/Linux is heavily in use to this day and as a result all the graphical desktop developers (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc) make sure to include a GUI that emulates the original command line interface which are usually known as Terminal widows (Gnome Terminal, Kterm, etc).

If you use the Gnome desktop then you must be aware of the fact that you actually can't open more than one terminal in the same Gnome Terminal window. Although we can open multiple instance in new tabs but having more than one opened in the same window can be quite useful since you don't have to click on the tab to see what's going in there ;-) all the time.

Although I don't think this utility will be useful to most of the usual users but for some ... who still use the command line interface (system administrators, etc) quite often this excellent little tool called Terminator (not featuring Arnold :P) will most definitely come in handy.

You can select between Terminals using the mouse...

According to the official page it's available for a lot of GNU/Linux distributions by default but thanks to the PPA in Ubuntu the installation is a breeze :D.

You can install Terminator in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (11.10, 10.10 and 10.04) by entering the below command.

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

Once installed you can run it by pressing "Alt" + "F2" keys and put the below command into the box and it should be launched.

terminator

Strangely it didn't add any shortcut icon to my menu-bar. But then I restarted the Laptop and it was there (at last) in "Applications" -> "Accessories".

Once opened, you can use keyboard shortcuts like "Ctrl+Shift+O" which should add a new Terminal Horizontally or use "Ctrl+Shift+E" which will add new ones Vertically.

Or just right click on the main window and choose "Split Horizontally"| "Split Vertically". You can configure the colours and keyboard shortcuts and even the built in plug-ins and huge list of other custmizable options by right clicking and going into the "preference" section as well.

A lot of customizations available...

You can read about every shortcut and other useful features by reading its manual (man terminator) and can close the opened terminal windows by entering "exit" and pressing enter as well.

Good luck.