5 Linux terminal apps that are better than your default – and free to install

Back in my early days of Linux, the terminal was a necessity. Now, the GUIs are so advanced, user-friendly, and powerful, that you could go your entire Linux career and never touch a terminal window.

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But when you do need to dive into those commands, you’ll want a terminal app that’s better than the stock default your distribution most likely uses.

Fortunately, there are plenty of options, and here are my five favorites (all of which are free and can be installed from your distribution’s default repositories).

1. Guake

Guake is just cool. It’s a drop-down terminal client that, when you hit F12 on your keyboard, will roll down from the top of your display. When you’re done, hit F12 again and it’ll hide itself away until you need it next. Guake is also highly configurable. You can tweak the startup and tabs, the main window, the shell, scrolling, the appearance, keyboard shortcuts, quick open, hooks, and compatibility. 

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Guake includes transparency, theming, shell selection, and much more. What I really like about Guake is that it’s always at the ready. Just hit the keyboard shortcut and it’s there. Instead of having to add yet another icon to your favorites (or on the desktop), keep it clean while still retaining easy access to your terminal app.

2. Warp

Warp is your terminal app on steroids. The big draw to Warp is that it includes a built-in AI that can be used to help you learn commands or even answer questions about the programming language you’re trying to learn. One really cool feature found in Warp is that you can ask it questions to figure out the command you need to run. 

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For example, say you want to list out the contents of your home directory with a long list and show hidden files. Instead of having to remember ls -la ~/, you could type, show what’s in ~/. The natural language addition makes it easy to learn the commands you need to use Linux. I’ve covered Warp on its own, so you can check out the full review and see just how incredible this app is.

3. Kitty

I’m not talking about the PUSA song but, rather, the Linux terminal app. At first blush, you might think Kitty is just a straightforward terminal app but it does have some tricks up its sleeve. For example, Kitty includes split panes which make it possible to split your terminal window into multiple panes (either vertically or horizontally). To split panes hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter on your keyboard and the terminal will split into two vertical panes. Hit the combination again and it’ll split the vertical pane with focus into two horizontal panes. 

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Kitty also includes several handy features, such as the ability to edit remote files locally. It’s tricky to do this, but once you get the hang of it, it’s simple. To pull this off, you have to make use of Kitty’s kittens plugins feature, which includes an SSH plugin. Remote into your machine with the help of the ssh kitten like so:

kitty +kitten ssh user@server

Where user is the username on the remote server and server is the IP address of the remote server. Once logged in, issue the following command:

Now, hit Ctrl+Shift and then click on the file you want to edit. You’ll be asked if you want to edit, open, or save the file. 

It’s tricky, but a really cool feature to make use of.

4. Terminator

Terminator is another terminal app that can do horizontal and vertical splits. You can also assign custom titles to each terminal window, so you never mistake one for another. This is a great feature when using one terminal for admin tasks (say, on a remote machine) and another terminal for local tasks. Those panes can be dragged and dropped into any order. 

Terminator also supports profiles, color schemes, font configuration, and customizable keyboard shortcuts.

5. Eterm

Eterm is a hold-over from my Enlightenment days. This terminal window app is fairly basic but it does offer background images, transparency, brightness/contrast/gamma controls, and much more. 

The one thing to keep in mind with Eterm is that it was intended for the Enlightenment desktop, so your mileage may vary on what features will actually work, depending on the desktop environment you use. 

Also, the menu in the app window will look a bit out of place because it conforms to the Enlightenment look and feel. Even so, this is a fun terminal app to have, even if only for the background image feature.

And there you have it, five terminal apps that you’ll most likely enjoy more than the default on your Linux distribution of choice.