Tilda Terminal Emulator

Posted on: October 10th, 2011 by 7 Comments

If you are looking for a cool terminal emulator with a bit of style try Tilda. Tilda uses a drop-down style interface that resembles the Quake chat window. Tilda is also highly customizable allowing you to select different functions or even colors for the main window.

About Tilda

When running Tilda will hide itself from view, allowing you to set and use a simple shortcut which will cause the main window to magically appear when needed. Personally this is one of my favorite terminal emulators.

Tilda Terminal Emulator Screenshot

Tilda Terminal Emulator Installation

This terminal emulator is easy to install and very easy to use. Here are some installation tips that may help.

Ubuntu Tilda Installation

You can install Tilda terminal emulator on your Ubuntu system by using the following commands today.

$ sudo apt-get install tilda

Tilda Terminal Emulator Interface

The Tilda terminal emulator offers an extremely simple interface that aims to be very unobtrusive. By default you will have the clean terminal interface that drops down from the top of the desktop.

Interface Details

The scroll bar can be toggled on or off, but you will still have this ability using your mouse. You also have full control over the colors used in the Tilda window. Tilda can be moved or resized easily from the preferences window as well, and transparency options are available as well.

The Tilda Menu

The Tilda window functions without window borders or buttons There is a single menu that remains hidden, this can be displayed by right-clicking on the Tilda window background.

Tilda Terminal Emulator Menus

By default the Tilda terminal emulator has no visible menu, but you can get access to one simply by right-clicking on the desktop background. The Tilda Menu contains the following items and actions.

New Tab

Use this to launch a new virtual shell in an alternate tab. A new tab bar will then appear at the top of the window, you can then switch between tabs using each one as an entirely different work environment.

Close Tab

You can use this option to close the currently opened virtual shell tab.

Copy

Use this option to copy text to the clipboard.

Paste

This will allow you to paste text from the clipboard.

Preferences

This option will open the Tilda terminal emulator preferences dialog.

Quit

You can use this option to close and quit Tilda terminal emulator.

Tilda Terminal Emulator Preferences

The following options can be found in the Tilda Preferences window.

General

From the general tab of the Tilda preferences window you can make Tilda display only on the current workspace, or on all workspaces. You can toggle the taskbar icon, or the Tilda window border. Tilda can be displayed always on top, or underneath of other windows. If you want you can start Tilda hidden. Double buffering is also available. You can toggle the terminal bell for errors and notifications, or toggle cursor blinking. Font options are also available, you can enable antialiasing or bold text. Or you can change the position of your open tabs. The font used in the main Tilda window can also be changed, as well as the font size.

Title And Command

Here you can set an initial title for when you start Tilda, or you can choose a dynamic title before, after, or in place of the existing title. You can run a custom command that you specify, or change the default web browser used when you click a URL.

Appearance

The appearance tab will let you adjust the window height, width, or position. You can also enable transparency for the main Tilda window, or enable a cool animated drop-down effect. If you want you can even select an image to use as a background for the Tilda window.

Colors

From here you can choose a new color scheme for the main Tilda window, or you can create your own color scheme.

Scrolling

This menu will allow you to enable or disable the visibility of the scroll bar in the main window. You can also scroll with a keystroke, or using the background.

Compatibility

Here you can change the functions of the backspace or delete keys. You can also reset compatibility options to default at any time.

Keybindings

From this tab you can change the key binding used to display the main window.

Tags: , , , , , | Posted in Applications

  • hippo

    When I use Tilda with Compiz, the window suddenly becomes blank and I have to restart Tilda. Right now, I’m using stjerm, another drop-down terminal.

    • http://linuxlibrary.org thinkinhurtz

      Hi hippo, nice to see you visiting again. I also use Tilda with Compiz, but I have never had any problems myself. Thanks for letting us know about stjerm, another alternative for me to try!

  • Nightmare

    hippo disable “animation pulldown” under “appearance” setting.

  • David P.

    is there a way to make Tilda run as a login shell?  I want this cause it seems to be the only way to get auto-complete to work with APT.

    • http://linuxlibrary.org/ thinkinhurtz

       Sorry David, it appears that there is no clearly viable solution for running Tilda as a login shell. There is nothing listed in the manual, preferences, or help files. You can however run custom commands on startup. On that note, could you not just start Tilda with a custom command to restart bash with desired profile and login files? Not sure if this will work, or if it is exactly what you wanted. I am just trying to think of dirty work-around solutions. I think a closer look at the Tilda config files may be needed.

      These links may help with login shells, though this is not exactly my strong point, sorry!

      http://www.bo.infn.it/alice/alice-doc/mll-doc/linux/admin/node48.html

      http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/difference-between-normal-shell-and-login-shell-14983/

      • David P.

        I appreciate the info, I’ll look through those links and see if they can help, I’m still pretty new to Linux, so I’m still learning all this.

        The reason I was wanting it to run as a login shell is for APT to autocomplete. example: I already have Google Chrome installed, so the Google repository is already in my repository list. If I type say “sudo apt-get install google-” and then h it the TAB key twice, the terminal will only autocomplete or show me a list of option when running as a login shell. Autocomplete works for directories and already install programs just fine, but not with ATP.

    • Joseph Edwards VIII

      Yes! There is.. just use “/bin/bash –login” (no quotes) as the “custom command” to execute “instead of the shell” in the “Title and Command” tab of Tilda preferences. This is just running the login shell instead of the shell, so it’s not a dirty hack. It’s a rather elegant solution (thanks Tilda devs!) that allows the user to decide which shell to use and how. Bash isn’t the only game in town you know.