Hide the cursor in terminal

Problem
You want to hide the cursor in terminal.

Solution
Hide:

setterm -cursor off

Bring it back:

setterm -cursor on

_{Found here.}

Terminator: a cross-platform terminal emulator with advanced features

Terminator is a cross-platform GPL terminal emulator with advanced features.

I’ve been using konsole for years but I think I will switch to terminator.

Features:

• Arrange terminals in a grid (see screenshot below)
• Tabs
• Highly configurable
• Drag and drop re-ordering of terminals
• Lots of keyboard shortcuts (see the keybindings section)
• Save multiple layouts and profiles via GUI preferences editor

Screenshot:

Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome-terminator
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install terminator

My config file:

See my config file here. Its location is $HOME/.config/terminator/config (rename it to “config“).

Links:

• http://www.tenshu.net/terminator/ (I tried this one.)
• http://software.jessies.org/terminator/ (Another one. The difference is not yet clear.)

Update (20110511)
I was using terminator for a month but today I switched back to konsole. Terminator is not bad but I find some things annoying. I also sent two questions / feature requests to the developers and got no answers, so I don’t know if it’s still developed. Konsole is not that fancy but works just fine.

_{/ discussion /}

Install ncurses

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev

If you want to compile a source code and you get the “curses.h: No such file or directory” error, then these are the packages you need to install.

Tip from here.

Open Konsole from Nautilus

The following entry is based on the post “Nautilus Script to Launch a Terminal” by Linerd.

Problem

For navigating in the file system, I usually use Midnight Commander. However, sometimes it’s useful to switch to a graphical file manager, which is Nautilus under Gnome. For instance, browsing images with Nautilus is easier since it shows thumbnails. After using Nautilus for a while, I want to continue my work in a terminal (my favorite is konsole) in the current directory. How to do that?

Related work

There is a plugin in the repositories called “nautilus-open-terminal”. By default, the plugin calls gnome-terminal and it seems konsole is not supported :(

Solution

In this post, I found a simple and working solution. Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash
#
#  Nautilus script - terminal-here
#  This script will open a GNOME Terminal in the current directory.
#  Written by Linerd in August, 2009 - http://tuxtweaks.com/
#
#  Modification:
#  * konsole-here
#  * Open the Konsole terminal emulator in the current directory.
#
#  Save this script under $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/terminal-here. Make sure that
#  you give this file executable permission. { chmod +x terminal-here }
#
#  This program is free software.  It is distributed in the hope
#  that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
#  the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
#  PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.
######################################################################

if [ "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI" == "x-nautilus-desktop:///" ]; then
        DIR=$HOME"/Desktop"
else
        DIR=`echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI | sed 's/^file:\/\///' | sed 's/%20/ /g'`
fi

# gnome-terminal --working-directory="$DIR"
konsole --workdir "$DIR"

exit 0

The konsole modification was suggested by James in a comment in the previously referred post.

Installation: Save it in the directory $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts under the name konsole-here.

Usage: Right click in Nautilus, then choose Scripts -> konsole-here.

Launch Nautilus from terminal

When I want to launch Nautilus from the terminal, I use the alias “nh”, which stands for “nautilus here”, i.e. open Nautilus in the current directory:

alias nh='nautilus . 2>/dev/null'

Simply put this line in your ~/.bashrc file.

With this alias and with the script above, you can easily switch back and forth between Konsole and Nautilus.

Credits

• Linerd, original script with gnome-terminal support
• James, konsole patch

Trouble

There is one thing that troubles me. If I open a konsole from Nautilus, the newly opened konsole gets no focus :( That is, you cannot type immediately, first you need to click on its window. However, if you call the script from the Desktop, konsole gets the focus… If someone has a solution for this, please let me know.

Update (20110304): I think I have a solution for the problem. After switching off the visual effects, konsole gets the focus. Damn… Here is how to get rid of the eyecandy: right click on Desktop -> Change Desktop Background -> Visual Effects tab, select None.