Terminator – A Terminal Emulator to Manage Multiple Terminal Windows on Linux

Terminator is a terminal emulator released under General Public License and is available for all known platforms Windows, Mac OS, GNU/Linux. The application program lets you use multiple splitted and resized terminals, all at once on a single screen.

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

1. Automatically logs of all the terminal sessions.
2. Drag and Drop features for text and URLs.
3. Horizontal scrolling is supported.
4. Find, a function to search for any specific text within the terminal.
5. Support for UTF­8.
6. Intelligent Quit – It knows about the running process, if any.
7. Vertical scrolling is convenient.
8. Freedom of use, General Public License.
9. Support for Tab based Browsing.
10. Portal ­ written in Java.
11. Cross Platform – Support for all Known Major Platforms.

Installation of Terminator Emulator on Linux

On most of the standard Linux Distributions, terminator 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.

1. Split Terminal Horizontally – Ctrl+Shift+0

Split Terminal Windows

1. Split Terminal Vertically – Ctrl+Shift+E

Split Terminal Vertically

1. Move Parent Dragbar Right – Ctrl+Shift+Right_Arrow_key
2. Move Parent Dragbar Left – Ctrl+Shift+Left_Arrow_key
3. Move Parent Dragbar Up – Ctrl+Shift+Up_Arrow_key
4. Move Parent Dragbar Down – Ctrl+Shift+Down_Arrow_key
5. 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.

1. Search for a Keyword – Ctrl+Shift+f
2. Move to Next Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+N or Ctrl+Tab

Move to Next Terminal

1. Move to the Above Terminal – Alt+Up_Arrow_Key
2. Move to the Below Terminal – Alt+Down_Arrow_Key
3. Move to the Left Terminal – Alt+Left_Arrow_Key
4. Move to the Right Terminal – Alt+Right_Arrow_Key
5. Copy a text to clipboard – Ctrl+Shift+c
6. Paste a text from Clipboard – Ctrl+Shift+v
7. Close the Current Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+w
8. Quit the Terminator – Ctrl+Shift+q
9. Toggle Between Terminals – Ctrl+Shift+x
10. Open New Tab – Ctrl+Shift+t
11. Move to Next Tab – Ctrl+page_Down
12. Move to Previous Tab - Ctrl+Page_up
13. Increase Font size – Ctrl+(+)
14. Decrease Font Size – Ctrl+(­)
15. Reset Font Size to Original – Ctrl+0
16. Toggle Full Screen Mode – F11
17. Reset Terminal – Ctrl+Shift+R
18. Reset Terminal and Clear Window – Ctrl+Shift+G
19. Remove all the terminal grouping – Super+Shift+t
20. Group all Terminal into one – Super+g

Note: Super is a key with the windows logo right of left CTRL.