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  • Yakuake - a really neat terminal emulator

Sometimes interesting discoveries occur in unusual ways.

A little while ago this evening I couldn't get to sleep, and I wanted a snack, so I thought I'd come downstairs, for a while, eat a little something, and maybe read for a while. It occurred to me to check out Discover, as I'd only looked at it once before (to update my laptop firmware), and while I didn't notice any new features, a new terminal emulator caught my eye. I read about it, got intrigued, and installed it. Believe me, it's a keeper!

Called Yakuake, and here's what Discover says about it:

As far as I can tell, it's a complete version of KDE's Konsole terminal that disappears when it's not needed, and conveniently drops down from the top of the screen when it is. F12 is the default bit of magic that makes it appear anywhere you need a terminal, and it's implemented as a toggle. F12 also rolls it back up into the top of the screen when you don't need it anymore. Of course, you can change that in the menu. In true KDE style, Yakuake is incredibly configurable.

Readers might recall that my workflow uses a number of workspaces (currently 12) that allow me to keep the applications I use the most on their own uncluttered desktops. One of those workspaces is dedicated to a terminal. But now I can open a terminal with the press of a key from any workspace where I happen to be. Or from any of my 54 Vivaldi tab windows. And it's Konsole in every respect. I was pleased to find that it started up using the Konsole profile I'd created years ago, and the macros I've written for BASH over the years are not only present, but all of them work flawlessly.

I can't think of any reason why I still need to reserve a whole workspace for a terminal, now that Yakuake is available wherever I might need it. I'm not an impulsive youngster anymore, but I strongly suspect that the Terminal workspace will be gone by tomorrow.

Thanks, @ReillyBrogan!

    On GTK DEs I can recommend Tilda. I use it a lot and it's easy access to the terminal with press of one button.

    WetGeek I strongly suspect that the Terminal workspace will be gone by tomorrow.

    My prediction came true. I now have a set of 11 workspaces instead of the former 12. The Terminal icon in my "dock" (actually Terminology for the last couple years) disappeared as well, replaced by a Yakuake icon, so I don't even need to reach for F12 to toggle it. Just click an icon in the dock.

    I'm not kidding myself ... I'll be looking for the Terminal icon out of habit for a while. But I'm pretty happy about the way things are working now. I use a terminal a whole lot, and have done so ever since back in my Windows days. So, for me, this is a pretty significant workflow change.

        WetGeek My prediction came true.

        I've always been able to install and use any GNOME software I wanted to, on my KDE Plasma computers. Mybe I've just been lucky, but I haven't run into any that hasn't worked yet. I figured it's all Linix, so why not? Just a few more dependencies to add, and I've always had plenty of room for them, and more.

        E.g., I play Gnome-mahjongg on my Plasma laptop nearly every day, although there's a somewhat less interesting KDE version available. And I prefer gparted to KDE partition manager, although I'm not quite sure why. I can work with either one.

        So, I guess I figured it ought to work the other way around, too, but it doesn't. Today I tried to configure my Xfce laptop like my Plasma daily driver, but Yakuake won't run there. It installs, and shows up in the menu, but I haven't been able to launch it at all, no matter how hard I've tried. I only assume that the other DEs based on GNOME will suffer the same fate, but I haven't tried any but Xfce yet. I'll get around to trying the others soon, and let you know what does and doesn't work for me.

            WetGeek 've always been able to install and use any GNOME software I wanted to, on my KDE Plasma computers. Mybe I've just been lucky, but I haven't run into any that hasn't worked yet. I figured it's all Linix, so why not?

            both are astute observations. most things work OK both ways. kde in gnome-based (is xfce gnome-based? I forgot gnomish for sure.) I find in gnome-based (budgie cinnamon etc) some kde apps are problematic. not all.
            linux is linux is linux but I know some elements/packages are incompatible/problematic between kde/gnome. no one ever likes to talk about that so kudos for talking about that. the pros might say nonsense, but unless you've seen it...

            WetGeek Today I tried to configure my Xfce laptop like my Plasma daily driver, but Yakuake won't run there.

            that's interesting but not surprising. I've not not made Dolphin, for instance, flourish on any gnome-based DE although many have.

                Tomorrow will be dedicated to last-miute prep for my hospital visit, but if I come out of that alive I intend to try installing Yakuake onto all my VMs with lesser-DEs (GNOME-based). I've been assumiing that if it won't work on one of them, then it probably won't work on any of them, but that may not be quite true. There might be something in Xfce that's causing the prolem, other than just the GNOME stack.

                Remember, the very first Sols Xfce machine I had started out as a Budgie VM. I installed the early Xfce DE software, then deleted the Budgie software, reboooted, and ended up with a running Xfce VM that I worked with for quite a while. So, yeah, the Xfce DE is based on the GNOME stack, too.

                  diagnostics0 There is Guake for Gnome based OS

                  Good to know. I'll give it a try on my Xfce laptop when I get a chance. Does it work like Yakuake? Only it''s based on the Gedit code, I presume?

                      WetGeek Does it work like Yakuake?

                      My curiosity got the best of me, and I decided not to wait to try it.

                      Indeed it looks a lot like Yakuake, but for GNOME. On the screen, mine looks like crap, and I haven't been able to change the size or anything else, but that may be because I've never used the FPS games terminal, or created a profile for it. I'll reserve further comment until I do have more time to spend with it, but those of you using a GNOME-based DE might want to beat me to that.

                      About all I know at this point is that F12 toggles it between hidden and visible, just like Yakuake. So that, at least, works quite well.

                          WetGeek

                          Tomorrow will be dedicated to last-miute prep for my hospital visit, but if I come out of that alive I intend to try installing Yakuake onto all my VMs with lesser-DEs (GNOME-based).

                          Above all, take care of yourself, because your wife, your family members need you.
                          I think I can say that the entire Solus community (users, developers) sends you all its encouragement at this difficult time for you.
                          Besides, the word “resilience” (name dedicated to the current version of Solus) must surely be part of your DNA.
                          Good luck, hold on.

                          Best regards.

                            Since there's no way to get any sleep tonight, I decided to go ahead and try this application on a GNOME-based system other than Xfce. As on that DE, it installed on Budgie without a problem (other than also installing 52 KDE dependencies along with it), but would not launch.

                            So I tried running it from the command line to see if I could get some more info that way:

                            Following that suggestion got me to another error, then another, then another, then a core dump. Finally, I figured life's too short for this. Besides, there's a GNOME-based version, already mentioned in this thread. If I do anything more here, it'll be to try to make that work better than I've seen so far. G'night ...

                            WetGeek On the screen, mine looks like crap, and I haven't been able to change the size or anything else

                            I finally got a chance to take a better look at guake, and found it to be quite a bit more usable than it first appeared. That's as expected. A right-click on the main window exposes a context menu that's worth spending some time with.

                            I can only assume that the defaults are chosen to work well with the developers' native language, and of course, when I commented on it the first time I looked at it, the language was American English. Its original appearance settings didn't handle that well, thus my "looks like crap" comment.

                            When I updated my Xfce VM this week, I installed guake, and spent some proper time with the settings. It was a simple matter to make things look quite good. The main difference I now see between guake and its yakuake cousin seems to be that I've found no way to adjust the size of the guake main window, except for making it full-screen. It defaullts to occupying the top half of the host's window, which is pretty useful. But pressing F11 toggles between that appearance and full-screen.

                            Now that I know what I didn't know before, I'm looking forward to configuring guake on my Xfce laptop. If you're using a GNOME-based DE, and use the terminal a lot, I now highly recommend your installing guake and spending some time with its settings to make it yours.