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Installing the Terminator terminal emulator

Introduction

Terminator is a terminal emulator based on GNOME Terminal that supports advanced features such as many terminal panels, grouping terminals, and saving your preferred layouts.

Assumptions

  • You have a Rocky Linux workstation or server with a GUI
  • You are an administration with sudo privileges

Installing Terminator

Terminator is in the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository, unavailable on a new installation. So first, we need to add EPEL to Rocky Linux.

  • Step 1 (optional): Enable the CodeReady Builder (CRB) repository
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb

While not strictly necessary for Terminator, CRB provides dependencies for some of the packages in EPEL, which can be useful if you plan on relying on that repository in the future.

  • Step 2: Add the EPEL repository
sudo dnf install epel-release -y
  • Step 3 (optional but highly recommended): Update your system
sudo dnf update -y --refresh
  • Step 4: Install Terminator
sudo dnf install terminator -y

Configuration

By default, Terminator does not look much different from the default GNOME Terminal. It looks even more bare-bones than the default.

Default layout of Terminator

To start customizing your new terminal, open the context menu by right-clicking anywhere in the background.

Terminator context menu

From this menu, we can split the window, open new tabs, and switch layouts. The Preferences submenu also allows us to customize the theme. It might be worth taking some time to familiarize yourself with the available options, as there are many settings that are beyond the scope of this guide.

Several keybindings are also available for those who prefer not to move their hand back and forth between the keyboard and mouse. For example, Shift+Ctrl+O will split the window horizontally into many terminals. Splitting the window many times and drag-and-drop reordering are additionally supported.

Terminator window with 3 split terminals

Finally, setting up a keyboard shortcut to open your new terminal can also be helpful. To do this, you can start by opening the Settings menu. You can access the menu in a few different ways, so for this guide, you will right-click the desktop and left-click "Settings."

Desktop context menu with "Settings" highlighted

From here, use the left menu to navigate to the "Keyboard" section, then click "Customize Shortcuts" at the bottom.

GNOME Settings Keyboard Menu

If this is your first time setting a custom shortcut, you'll see a button titled "Add Shortcut." Otherwise, you'll see a list of your shortcuts with a plus sign at the bottom. Click whichever applies to your situation to open the "Add Custom Shortcut" dialog. In the Name field, type an easy-to-remember nickname for your shortcut. For the Command field, type the name of our program: terminator. Then click "Set Shortcut" to set your new key combination.

Add Custom Shortcut dialog

While Ctrl+Alt+T is a traditional choice, feel free to choose whatever combination you wish. You can always update the shortcut name and key combination later. To save your shortcut, click "Add" at the top right of the Add Custom Shortcut dialog.

Add Custom Shortcut dialog completed for Terminator

Conclusion

Terminator is a powerful terminal emulator for both regular and power users. These examples only represent a small fraction of Terminator's capabilities. While this guide provides an overview of the installation steps for Rocky Linux, you might want to examine the documentation for a full explanation of Terminator's features.

Author: Andrew Scott

Contributors: Steven Spencer, Ganna Zhyrnova