Tilda: A Quake Style Drop Down Terminal Emulator for Ubuntu Linux
Tilda is an open source Quake Style drop down terminal emulator for Ubuntu Linux. It stays hidden from the desktop and slides down from the top of the desktop when a shortcut key or keys (by default F1) are pressed.
Lots of Ubuntu users , especially those who use terminal a lot, can have a very hectic time in regularly switching between the default Ubuntu terminal and other applications such as web browsers. In such case a drop down terminal emulator like Tilda can come very handy. Using Tilda, you can perform all the command line actions that can be performed in the default Ubuntu terminal.
Since you can easily hide and unhide Tilda by pressing a shortcut key,all command line actions can be easily performed without requiring to switch between the default terminal and other apps.
You can download the DEB package for Tilda from the download link given at the end of the post and use Ubuntu Software Center to install it. Since Tilda is already available in Ubuntu Software Center repositories, you can easily install it in Ubuntu 12.04 , 11.10 , 11.04 , 10.10 and 10.04 by running following commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get install tilda
Once installed, you can launch it easily. The default Tilda terminal emulator has black background with white text color. By default, it does not have borders.You need to press F1 by default to slide down the terminal emulator from the top of the deskop and press the same key to roll it back.
You can right click on the interface of Tilda and click on Preferences option to launch Tilda 2 Config to configure its settings. When you launch it for the first time also after its complete installation, the same dialog pops up to configure its settings.
You can open multiple tabs in the same window of Tilda and even close them from the right click context menu options as shown above.
Under the General tab of Tilda 2 Config, you can configure Tilda to display on all workspaces , show notebook border , start it hidden, enable doubel buffering and so on. You can also configure it to have audible terminal bell and cursor blinks.
You can also change the fonts , enable antialiasing, allow bold text, change postion of tabs and so on.
Under Title and Command tab, you can set its initial tile or dynamically set title. You can also run a custom command instead of the shell and choose the action to be performed when command exits.
You can also set the web browser with which the links displayed in the terminal emulator are to be opened.
Uner Appearance tab, you can configure the way it looks.
Under Colors tab , you can set the foreground and background colors. Under Scrolling tab , you can enable scrolling on the left or right and even completely disable it. You can also set other attributes related to the scrolling.
The Compatibility tab allows you configure compatibility options for Tilda. Under Keybindings tab, you can set which key to be used as pulldown key for Tilda.
Tilda is definitely a very useful drop down terminal emulator that gives you a lot of useful features by using just a little of your system resources.
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