Terminator is a terminal emulator released under General Public License and is available for GNU/LinuxPlatform. The application program lets you use multiple splitted and resized terminals, all at once on a single screen similar to tmux terminal multiplexer.
How it is Different
Having multiple Gnome Terminal in one window in a very flexible manner is a plus for Linux nerds.
Who Should use It
Terminator is aimed at those who normally arrange lots of terminals near each other, but don’t want to use a frame based window manager.
What are its Features
- Automatically logs of all the terminal sessions.
- Drag and Drop features for text and URLs.
- Horizontal scrolling is supported.
- Find, a function to search for any specific text within the terminal.
- Support for UTF8.
- Intelligent Quit – It knows about the running process, if any.
- Vertical scrolling is convenient.
- Freedom of use, General Public License.
- Support for Tab based Browsing.
- Portal written in Python.
- Platform – Support for GNU/Linux Platform.
Installation of Terminator Emulator on Linux
On most of the standard Linux Distributions, terminator 0.97 version is available in the repository, and cab be installed using apt or yum.
On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
First, you need to enable RPMForge repository under your system and then you install Terminator emulator using yum command as shown.
# yum install terminator
On Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint
On Debian based distributions, you can easily install using apt-get command as shown.
# apt-get install terminator
How to use Terminator
Run the “terminator” command in the terminal to use it. Once, you fire the command you will see a screen similar to below.
Terminator Terminal Window
Terminal Emulator Keyboard Shortcuts
To get the most out of Terminator it is crucial to know the key-bindings to control Terminator. The default shortcut keys that I use most are shown below.
- Split Terminal Horizontally – Ctrl+Shift+0
Split Terminal Windows
- Split Terminal Vertically – Ctrl+Shift+E
Split Terminal Vertically
- Move Parent Dragbar Right – Ctrl+Shift+Right_Arrow_key
- Move Parent Dragbar Left – Ctrl+Shift+Left_Arrow_key
- Move Parent Dragbar Up – Ctrl+Shift+Up_Arrow_key
- Move Parent Dragbar Down – Ctrl+Shift+Down_Arrow_key
- Hide/Show Scrollbar – Ctrl+Shift+s
Hide/Show Terminal Scrollbar
Note: Check the hidden scrollbar above, it can again be made visible using the same above key combination.
- Search for a Keyword – Ctrl+Shift+f
- Move to Next Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+N or Ctrl+Tab
Move to Next Terminal
- Move to the Above Terminal – Alt+Up_Arrow_Key
- Move to the Below Terminal – Alt+Down_Arrow_Key
- Move to the Left Terminal – Alt+Left_Arrow_Key
- Move to the Right Terminal – Alt+Right_Arrow_Key
- Copy a text to clipboard – Ctrl+Shift+c
- Paste a text from Clipboard – Ctrl+Shift+v
- Close the Current Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+w
- Quit the Terminator – Ctrl+Shift+q
- Toggle Between Terminals – Ctrl+Shift+x
- Open New Tab – Ctrl+Shift+t
- Move to Next Tab – Ctrl+page_Down
- Move to Previous Tab – Ctrl+Page_up
- Increase Font size – Ctrl+(+)
- Decrease Font Size – Ctrl+()
- Reset Font Size to Original – Ctrl+0
- Toggle Full Screen Mode – F11
- Reset Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+R
- Reset Terminal and Clear Window – Ctrl+Shift+G
- Remove all the terminal grouping – Super+Shift+t
- Group all Terminal into one – Super+g
Note: Super is a key with the windows logo right of left CTRL.
Reference Links
https://launchpad.net/terminator
That’s all for now.