terminator

We all know that a terminal in Linux is most the powerful application. Though we can do most of the tasks  with a single terminal window, sometimes we need multiple terminals to do some tasks .This may be done by opening multiple terminal windows. But this will occupy more real estate on the desktop you need to switch between the terminals to do the task. But what if we want to view all the tabs in a single glance. One simple solution would be to open multiple terminals in a single window so that you can see all the terminals at once. 

Well the solution to the above scenario is the 'terminator'. Terminator is a little project to produce an efficient way of filling a large area of screen space with terminals. The user can have multiple terminals in one window and use key bindings to switch between terminals. The above image is the screen shot of terminator with 4 terminals. The present working terminal is highlighted in red. You can switch between these terminals by pressing Ctrl+T or Alt+arrow key. Terminator is available in Ubuntu 11.10 through Ubuntu Software Center. Install terminator and launch the application. Right clicking on the terminal will  provide a menu to split the terminal. You can also change the color preferences of active, inactive and receiving terminals. Some other preferences options are same as that of default terminal.

If you wish to view a single terminal for a while, right click on that terminal and select zoom terminal. This will open the terminal in full screen. To restore, again right click and select 'restore all terminals'.

There are also many keybindings for terminator. Here are the keybindings to split the terminals

Ctrl+Shift+O (Split terminals Horizontally).

Ctrl+Shift+E (Split terminals Vertically).

For more keybindings right click on a terminal, select preferences and click on the keybindings tab.