Guake

I was updating my Arch Linux installation the other day and had a few problems. I decided to try to get rid of gnome, then realized that I use the gnome terminal all the time. I liked it. I needed a replacement for gnome terminal. I tried one or two terminal alternatives, but it was the rave reviews of Guake that caught my attention - as I wrote about this in More For My Devops Alter Ego, As I discussed in More For My Devops Alter Ego, finding the right tool can make all the difference in productivity and workflow management.

The name sounded weird, so I was skeptical at the start, but the raves about keeping it on in the background and having it appear with a quick button push seemed interesting. I downloaded it, and fired it up.

I was impressed from the start. Right from the get-go it seemed nicely configured. The transparency also seemed nice: useable but not distracting. It was set at full screen width, and I could not use anything else when the guake terminal was open until I realized they were right … one button click and it was out of the way. Customizing the interface can make a big difference; related to what I discussed in Arching Over when configuring openbox, it was straightforward with Guake. I can open the terminal and close it with one button click. Actually it is not being opened and closed, it is being set to visible - toggled on and off, so I don’t lose anything in the session. It is so nice for developing sites being one click away from the terminal.

The customization process was straightforward, much like configuring openbox as I described in Arching Over - this ease of use was a major plus for me. I quickly and easily set up my own shortcuts for toggling between tabs, so with guake I can quickly and easily access the desktop, and several tabs of the terminal with simple shortcuts so it is lightning fast and intuitive.

While Guake is primarily designed for GNOME, as discussed in Toil Toil when installing Arch Linux, this didn't deter me from keeping GNOME in my system. Here’s a link to the guake site.