Today, I would love to share with you a very simple, but useful tool. I use it for years now, and I think it is irreplaceable. This is Guake terminal.
What is Guake?
It is a drop-down terminal for Linux with GNOME Desktop Environment. When you use KDE Desktop Environment, you can check the Yakuake terminal. It’s similar to Guake. OK, but I don’t know which Desktop Environment I use? By default, GNOME is used by systems such as Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, or Mint. So, if you use any of those Linux distributions, you probably use GNOME.
Advantages of Guake
Guake is a simple tool. After you download and install Guake, you can start using this tool. Then whenever you press the F12 key, you will see the terminal on the top of your screen. Press F12 key again, the terminal will be gone.
This terminal is very useful. It is available all the time. When you press the F12 key, it will pop up again. Besides that, you can open many tabs on Guake. I work on Guake with 3 or 4 tabs. First for server, second for Ruby console, third for git, and last one for running tests.
I like this tool very much. Especially, after I configured it to launch with a system. I don’t need to think about running the terminal anymore. I just press F12 key, and that’s it. In a fast and easy way, I have access to all my open terminal tabs. And most important, I can use Guake without a mouse, using only the keyboard. It’s very important to me when I use a laptop where I have only the touchpad.
Guake - Keyboard shortcuts
If you like to use Guake without mouse, like I do, check out Guake keyboard shortcuts:
F12- show/hide GuakeF11- full screen GuakeF2- change name of cartCtrl + Shift + T- open new cartCtrl + Shift + W- close current cartCtrl + Shift + Q- close GuakeCtrl + Shift + R- rename current cartCtrl + ↑, ↓- resize GuakeCtrl + Pg Up/Pg Dn- change current cart to left/right site cartCtrl + Shift + C- copy selected text from consoleCtrl + Shift + V- paste selected text to consoleShift + Home/End- show begin/end of console bufferShift + Pg Up/Pg Dn- show up/down console screen