Yakuake – terminal in a Quake-style

Dec 292007

When you use console in X-Window, often and often you desktop are literally wasted with xterms. It is more important, that you productivity is lowered, too. But here is solution -- Yakuake.

Install Yakuake in Debian etch

#aptitude install yakuake

This will complete the installation

Gamer`s console

When I was young, I spent pretty much time with CounterStrike and QuakeIII. And I felled in love with this small and elegant console hidden-in-a-top of screen in Quake. Till now, I was missing this feature on my desktop. But surfing in Synaptic recently, I found what I missed so much -- Yakuake -- and installed it immediately.

Tweaking is necessary

The main thing after installing Yakuake is tweaking. For comfort and productive work, you should customise Yakuake to yourself: keyboard shortcuts, theme, console hide duration and so on.

First step is to define for yourself with size of console: if it`s too small, you can`t see all that is written in console, and if it`s too large, it can overlap all of applications. I think that vertical size of 40% is fine for me -- I can see everything in console and it don`t occludes other applications.

You can customize not only height of Yakuake console, but position on screen as well. It can be positioned in left, right on in centre. Of course, you can set position in procents precisely.

But the main thing in Yakuake are hotkeys. The work in console itself disposes to hotkeys and keyboard use, and properly configured hotkeys combinations can increase you productivity with Yakuake dramatically. There are not so much keys to customise, so tweaking don`t take so much time. By default you can call Yakuake by pressing F12 functional key, but you can redefine it to you choice.

Because Yakuake is very dynamic thing, only video can show it real capabilities, so I made short youtube film and here
A little comment: first of all, film shows conventional work in terminal with xterms in X-Window, and they overlap each other. Then Yakuake is ran, and do the same stuff much more effective.

Original post is HERE.

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HappyNoff

Hi,

In the video you don’t show the yakuake spliting. I don’t know which version you’re using but with yakuake v2.8 you can split verticaly and horizontaly. It’s very very usefull
SubWorx

Hi,

besides the fact that this quake console thing sure looks cool… is there any real advantage yakukake offers over good old screen?
screen can be customized to hell, including keyboard shortcuts, and is not limited to X, can be detached if unneeded, even supports multiple users, …
Fred

Yakuake and Screen do not fulfill the same purpose so it does not make much sense to compare those.
For me Screen is great to run several shells in an environment where I do not have to care about the graphical environment. I can kill X without caring about the shells I run in Screen.
Yakuake is rather to be compared to well, a “normal” terminal emulator, but it slides down much cooler.
http://debianletters.blogspot.com/ virens

Thanks for comments!

2 HappyNoff Says:
>> In the video you don’t show the yakuake spliting.

My version of Yakuake can’t do this – in my Debian Etch box Yakuake v2.7.5-4

>> yakuake v2.8 you can split verticaly and horizontaly.
So, you can open two terminals in one window? Am I right?

>> It’s very very usefull
No doubt

2 SubWorx Says:
>> besides the fact that this quake console thing sure
>> looks cool… is there any real advantage yakukake offers >> over good old screen?
Screen is good-old-style program, and I use it in terminal when close X. But Yakuake is much more fancy, and it allows to prevent wasting all desktop by xterms.

>> screen can be customized to hell, including keyboard
>> shortcuts, and is not limited to X
Yes, that’s right. In terminal – screen, in X 0 yakuake.

2 Fred Says:
>>Yakuake and Screen do not fulfill the same purpose so it
>> does not make much sense to compare those.
Of course, Yakuake is more eye candy, but in X it looks pretty nice, nicely that Screen

>>I can kill X without caring about the shells I run in Screen.
I primary working in X, but I don’t ignore Screen.

>> but it slides down much cooler.
That’s it!