A terminal emulator is computer software which emulates a dumb video terminal within some other display architecture.
A terminal emulator allows the user to access a console and all its applications such as command line interfaces (CLI) and text user interface software. Even with modern desktop environments, it remains the case that accessing the command-line interface lets users perform tasks that would be very difficult, or too repetitive to undertake from a graphical environment. Using the command-line is often the quickest and most convenient way to perform many tasks.
Desktop environments come supplied with a number of terminal emulators. GNOME and KDE provide terminal emulators. For GNOME the default terminal emulator is GNOME Terminal. Its counterpart in KDE is Konsole. Whatever desktop environment I am using, I spend most of my time using alternative terminal emulators, particularly Terminator. It offers all of the features I love.
Even though Terminator meets all my needs, I am always on the look out for new terminal emulators that might offer a different way of working. In this article, I explore three new terminal emulators. Each of these open source applications are a long way from the finished article. The software featured here are not stable, not feature complete, and should not be used in a production environment. But they have real potential.
They are all released under an open source license. If you like experimenting with new software and use the terminal, give these three a whirl!
| Terminal Emulators | |
|---|---|
| Terminology | Fast, lean and visually enhanced open source terminal emulator |
| Final Term | New breed of terminal emulator |
| cool-old-term | Tries to mimic the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens |
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