Have you ever wanted to change your terminal? Each Linux distribution comes with an already installed one, although the operation of the terminal is the same for every distribution, this does not mean that they are all the same. Each one of them has a different look and feel.
Of course that is the good thing about Linux you have a huge choice in everything. And with terminals, the choice is really huge, so here in this article we will try to show you eight of the best that exist.
We must mention that although they are some of the best, people have different tastes and if your favorite terminal is not among those mentioned, we will be happy to add it by writing us a comment bellow with which it is.
Article Content
- Kitty terminal emulator
- Terminator terminal emulator
- Yakuake terminal emulator
- Guake terminal emulator
- Hyper terminal emulator
- Cool Retro terminal emulator
- Konsole terminal emulator
- Tilda terminal emulator
1 – Kitty terminal emulator
kitty is a free and open-source GPU accelerated terminal emulator focused on performance and features. This is one of few terminal emulators with GPU support, another one is Alacritty. Some says that kitty is faster than iTerm2 on macOS. Кitty shares its name with another program – KiTTY – fork of PuTTY for Windows.
Key features:
- Display images (when ImageMagick installed)
- Interactive unicode characters input (ctrl+shift+u), by name, code, recently used
- Tiling of multiple windows and tabs
- Single config file
- Hyperlink clicks
- Mouse support (for example in Vim)
- Multiple copy/paste buffers like in Vim
# How to install kitty terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install kitty
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
2 – Terminator terminal emulator
Terminator is an open-source terminal emulator programmed in Java. It is available on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux and other Unix systems that use the X Window System. Terminator will run on any modern POSIX system running Java 6 or later. Terminator is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.
Key features:
- Arrange terminals in a grid-like structure
- Tabs
- 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
- Extensible through plugins
# How to install terminator terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install terminator
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
3 – Yakuake terminal emulator
Yakuake is a drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology. It’s a KDE Extragear application released under GPL v2, GPL v3 or any later version accepted by the membership of KDE e.V.
Key features:
- Smoothly rolls down from the top of your screen
- Tabbed interface
- Configurable dimensions and animation speed
- Skinnable
- Sophisticated D-Bus interface
# How to install Yakuake terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install yakuake
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
4 – Guake terminal emulator
Guake is a top-down terminal for Gnome, and is highly inspirated by the famous terminal used in Quake .
You can instantaneously show and hide your terminal with a single key stroke, execute a command, and then go back to your previous task without breaking your workflow.
Key features:
- Tailored for quick access to terminal on GNOME
- Works fast and does not need a lot of system resource
- Shortcut key to access
# How to install Guake terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install guake
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
5 – Hyper terminal emulator
Hyper is a beautiful and extensible experience for command-line interface users, built on open web standards. The focus is primarily around speed, stability and the development of the correct API for extension authors.
Key features:
- Terminal built on HTML/CSS/JS
- Electron-based
- Cross-platform
- Extensive configuration options
# How to install Hyper terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
wget -O hyper_3.0.2_amd64 https://releases.hyper.is/download/deb
sudo gdebi hyper_3.0.2_amd64
Code language: PHP (php)You can check the official web site: Here
6 – Cool Retro terminal emulator
cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight.
Key features:
- Retro Themes
- Animation/Effects to tweak
# How to install Cool Retro terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
wget https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/releases/download/1.1.1/Cool-Retro-Term-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage
chmod a+x Cool-Retro-Term-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage
./Cool-Retro-Term-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage
Code language: PHP (php)You can check the official web site: Here
7 – Konsole terminal emulator
Konsole is a free and open-source terminal emulator which is part of KDE Applications and ships with the KDE desktop environment. It was originally written by Lars Doelle. Konsole includes many projects which may themselves have their own licences. However, it itself is protected under the GPL v2 or later, and GNU Free Documentation License. This is due to the smaller projects within Konsole having compatible licenses.
Key features:
- Built-in support for bi-directional text display.
- Tabbed terminals. Tab titles update dynamically depending on the current activity in the terminal.
- Translucent backgrounds
- Split-view mode
- Directory and SSH bookmarking
- Customizable color schemes
- Customizable key bindings
- Notifications about silence or activity in a terminal
- Incremental search
- Can open Dolphin or the user’s preferred file manager at the terminal program’s current directory[9]
- Export of output in plain text or HTML format
- Text reflow
# How to install Konsole terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install konsole
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
8 – Tilda terminal emulator
Tilda is a stylish drop-down terminal based on GTK+. With the help of a single key press you can launch a new or hide Tilda window. However, you can add colors of your choice to change the look of the text and Terminal background.
Key features:
- Interface with Highly customization option.
- You can set the transparency level for Tilda window.
- Excellent built-in colour schemes.
# How to install Tilda terminal emulator in Ubuntu 21.04 Linux?
sudo apt install tilda
Code language: CSS (css)You can check the official web site: Here
Conclusion
There are many free and open source terminal emulators for Linux. We could say that for every taste there is a choice. If you know other good terminal emulators please comment bellow so that we can expand the list.
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