Terminal emulators comparison
My primary terminal emulator is Xfce4 default terminal emulator (xfce4-terminal). But there is a drawback, that is, the menu bar problem. If using the “mc” (midnight commander), pressing F10 will invoke the menu bar instead of running the command in the “mc”. Other than that, if using the emacs, the alt key will correspond to the menu bar instead of the emacs hotkeys. Thus, I would like to look for an alternative.
Terminator has a lot of features, especially splitting windows and re-arrange the windows. However, I found that drag-and-drop from the file manager does not convert to file path correctly in the terminator.
So, I tried all the terminal emulators which are available in Arch Linux official repositories.
| File manager drag-and-drop to file path | Menu bar | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| xfce4-terminal | ✓ | ✓ | Xfce4 terminal emulator |
| gnome-terminal | ✓ | ✓ | GNOME terminal emulator |
| lxterminal | ✓ | ✓ | LXDE terminal emulator |
| konsole | With context menu | ✓ | KDE terminal emulator |
| terminology | ✗ | ✗ | Elementary terminal emulator |
| mate-terminal | ✓ | ✓ | Mate terminal emulator |
| pantheon-terminal | ✓ | ✗ | Pantheon terminal emulator |
| sakura | ✗ | ✗ | |
| terminator | Partially work | ✗ | Allows split window |
| guake | ✗ | ✗ | Quake style drop down |
| yakuake | ✗ | ✗ | Quake style drop down |
| tilda | ✗ | ✗ | No scroll bar and other window components |
Based on the results of the comparison I have done above, the terminal emulator which allows drag-and-drop from file manager to file path, yet there is no menu bar, is pantheon-terminal. The drawback of pantheon-terminal is that I cannot change the font properties through the terminal itself.
Xfce4-terminal, gnome-terminal, lxterminal, and mate-terminal are very similar. The konsole allows drag-and-drop from dolphin only. But it does not convert to file path directly, yet a context menu for us to choose to paste location, copy, move, link, or change directory.
I personally don’t like guake, yakuake, and tilda.
If terminator allows drag-and-drop like xfce4-terminal and others, I will choose it as my primary terminal emulator.
As a conclusion, what I can do is to use multiple terminal emulators depend on the situation I face, and my primary terminal emulator is still xfce4-terminal.