Archives For terminal

Want to let “Open in Terminal” context (right-click) menu option work for another terminal emulator? Here’s an extension to do the similar job for Nautilus.

When right-clicking on either a folder or blank area in file manager, there’s an “Open in Terminal” menu option to launch system default terminal with that folder as working directory.

The option in Ubuntu so far is provided by the built-in gnome-terminal package. Meaning no way to use the option for another terminal emulator. However, there’s an extension can add similar option to open terminal from in-side folder.

And not only for Gnome Terminal, the extension supports many other terminal emulators:

  • alacritty
  • blackbox
  • cool-retro-term
  • deepin-terminal
  • foot/footclient
  • guake
  • hyper
  • kermit
  • kgx (GNOME Console)
  • kitty
  • konsole
  • mate-terminal
  • mlterm
  • qterminal
  • sakura
  • st properly patched
  • tabby
  • terminator
  • terminology
  • termite
  • tilix (the package itself supports this stuff)
  • urxvt
  • urxvtc
  • wezterm
  • xfce4-terminal

The extension adds the menu option “Open XXX Here“, with XXX changes automatically according which terminal emulator is in use.

How to Install the Nautilus Extension

This tutorial is tested and works in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 20.04. It should also work in Fedora Workstation and other Linux with GNOME & Nautilus.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then run command to install git and python3-nautilus package:

sudo apt install git python3-nautilus

2. Then, clone the source code from Github project page, by running command:

git clone https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal.git

3. Finally, run the installer in the source code to install the extension:

cd nautilus-open-any-terminal && ./tools/update-extension-user.sh install

It installs the extension for current user only. If you would like to make it work for all users in system, run sudo ./tools/update-extension-system.sh install instead.

Apply and Set your Terminal Emulator

After installed the extension, apply it by running command to quit Nautilus:

nautilus -q

Then, open “Dconf Editor” (install it from Ubuntu Software) and navigate to ‘com/github/stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal‘. Finally, set the value of ‘terminal’ to tell which terminal emulator to use.

You can of course choose another terminal emulator by running command (replace kgx with yours):

gsettings set com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal terminal "kgx"

Tip: You may also remove the built-in ‘Open in Terminal’ option by running command:

sudo apt remove nautilus-extension-gnome-terminal

Uninstall

There seems no uninstaller script at the moment of writing. User can however manually removed the installed files by running command:

rm ~/.local/share/nautilus-python/extensions/open_any_terminal_extension.py
rm ~/.local/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal.gschema.xml
rm ~/.local/share/localenautilus-open-any-terminal.mo

If you installed the extension system wide for all users, use the commands below instead to remove all the files:

sudo rm /usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/open_any_terminal_extension.py
sudo rm /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal.gschema.xml
sudo rm /usr/share/locale/.nautilus-open-any-terminal.mo

Also quit file manager via nautilus -q command to apply change.

For those who want to install the latest Tilix terminal emulator 1.9.5 in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. You can now get it from PPA repository.

Tilix is a popular tiling terminal emulator, that allows to split terminal window horizontally and/or vertically, and drag and drop re-arrange them. It also has many other great features including sync input between terminals, background images, quake mode (drop-down terminal), and custom hyperlinks.

The terminal emulator package is available in Ubuntu repository, but old. Though, the latest v1.9.5 has been released for 5 months. Changes in Tilix 1.9.5 include:

  • Disable advanced paste when there is no linebreak like iTerm2
  • Add environment variable when in quake mode
  • Add possibility to configure always enabled regex
  • And various bug-fixes.

1. Add PPA

The unofficial PPA so far contains the latest package for Ubuntu 22.04 only. Due to dependency issue, it does not build in Ubuntu 20.04.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/tilix

2. Update package cache

Ubuntu now automatically refresh the package cache while adding PPA. But, you have to run apt update command manually in some derivatives, e.g., Linux Mint.

sudo apt update

3. Install Tilix

Finally, install the software package by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install tilix

After installation, search for and open Tilix either from start menu or by searching from ‘Activities’ overview, depends on which DE you have.

How to Uninstall:

For any issue, you can install ppa-purge and use the tool to purge PPA. Which will also downgrade all installed packages from that PPA to the stock version in your Ubuntu:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/tilix

And if you need to terminal emulator any more, remove it either from Ubuntu Software or by running command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove tilix tilix-common

This simple tutorial shows how to change the default terminal emulator from Gnome Terminal to the one that you prefer in Ubuntu.

The default Gnome Terminal is great, but there are many good alternatives (e.g., tilix). If you prefer to use another one and want to set it as default, so you may press Ctrl+Alt+T to open it.

Step 1: Create symbolic link to x-terminal-emulator

Ubuntu seems default to x-terminal-emulator, which is a virtual package by default links to Gnome Terminal.

By creating a group of alternatives to the package allows to switch which one to use at any time with a single command.

Firstly, open terminal and run command to create a symbolic link (replace /usr/bin/tilix with your terminal emulator):

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator x-terminal-emulator /usr/bin/tilix 1

Some terminal emulators may already created the symbolic link automatically after installation, so you can just skip this step.

Step 2: Select your terminal to use as default:

Next, run the command below will output all available alternatives:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

Type the number for the one that you prefer and hit Enter will set it as default terminal.

In the case, I selected 5: ‘/usr/bin/tilix.wrapper’. It’s a Tilix wrapper with command line arguments that created automatically during installation. Step 1,

Restore and remove the alternative link:

To revert back to Gnome Terminal, just re-run the command in Step 2 and choose number 0 or 1.

And to remove the link created via Step 1, use command (replace ‘/usr/bin/tilix’ accordingly):

sudo update-alternatives --remove x-terminal-emulator /usr/bin/tilix

That’s all. Enjoy!

Tilix, the popular tiling terminal emulator, released v1.9.5 with a few new features and some bug-fixes.

Tilix is a GTK+3 terminal emulator supports for splitting app window horizontally or vertically. It supports drag and drop re-arranging terminals, quake mode, custom hyperlinks, as well as many other features.

After a year of development, it finally announced the new 1.9.5 with only a few new features due to lack of maintainers.

New features in Tilix 1.9.5 include:

  • Disable advanced paste when there is no linebreak like iTerm2
  • Add environment variable when in quake mode
  • Add possibility to configure always enabled regex

Get Tilix 1.9.5 in Ubuntu:

There’s no binary package for current Ubuntu releases so far, though it’s proposed to be included in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS repository.

User may download the source code and build manually via the link below:

KGX is a simple and user-friendly terminal emulator for GNOME. It aims to be a “Core” app for GNOME and Phosh, graphical shell for mobile devices like Purism’s Librem 5.

Rather than replacing GNOME Terminal, it’s on target to serve casual Linux user who rarely needs a terminal to carry out simple command line tasks. Via libhandy library, the terminal adjusts nicely to small screen sizes and for touch usage.

KGX terminal emulator. Image from thisweek.gnome.org

The name KGX is the station code for King’s Cross, the London terminus of the East Coast Main Line. The app is available in Ubuntu repositories since Ubuntu 21.04, though the package version is lag behind.

The stock KGX in Ubuntu 21.10 has a semi-transparent app window and the UI looks kinda like Gnome terminal. Though it’s lightweight and has less features.

KGX in Ubuntu 21.10

Install KGX in Ubuntu 21.10 / 22.04:

For Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10 and next Ubuntu 22.04, it’s easy to try out this terminal emulator by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, and then run command in terminal to install it:

sudo apt install kgx

Then, search for and open the terminal emulator from activities overview.

While the stock package is always old, you may build it from source which is available at KGX project page.