Episode: 790
Title: HPR0790: guake a drop-down terminal emulator
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0790/hpr0790.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:31:46

---

.
Hello, this is Diablo Marcus, recording an episode for Hacker Public Radio.
I'm going to be recording this episode on Gwake as in Golf Uniform Alpha Kilo Echo.
And that's the drop-down terminal emulator for the Gnome desktop.
There's another one called Yakuake, or believe it's high-pronouncing,
it could be Yakuake, or whatever else you want to say, for the KDE Self Recompilation.
And that's spelled Yankee Alpha Kilo Uniform Alpha Kilo Echo.
And they're both drop-down terminal emulators, so if that's hard to envision for you,
basically what it is, you press a button, in my case, F12 to drop-down Gwake,
and it falls from the top of the screen, kind of like those old games in Quake,
the first person shooter, which I'm sure many of us geeks have known and loved,
but it allows you to edit and use the terminal quickly,
and then hit F12 and make it disappear.
Again, without having to advance around between virtual desktops,
and it allows all sorts of other nifty functionality.
For instance, you can have multiple terminal sessions in the same window
and get between them just by pressing Ctrl, Page Up, Page Down,
and Ctrl, Shift, T to create new terminals.
So at the moment, I have seven terminals open in my Gwake session,
and I'm doing all sorts of different things.
You can configure all sorts of different options with it as well.
For instance, it can have all the fun transparency settings,
if you have those enabled in your desktop.
You can change the key that makes it drop-down,
you can make it show on top, always, or fall behind things.
You can choose the scrollback lines, everything that a regular emulator would have,
but you can also change the colors, do some really fun things,
such as making it always start up as a login terminal.
So if you use lots of different user profiles,
you can use those inside of Gwake as well.
Yeah, it has tight integration with the GNOME desktop,
but I've used it on XFCE, OpenBox, lots of other things,
and it works just fine.
Probably pulls in some extra dependencies, so it should be aware of that at least.
But I'd recommend trying it out,
because it certainly can't hurt at worst you uninstall it,
and you've seen something else.
So if you're used to just using X term or something,
it would definitely try out one of the other emulators.
For what it's worth, I use Terminator as my other emulator,
but I rarely ever open it anymore,
unless I need something kind of on the screen,
well, I'm doing other things,
and don't want to have the drop-down transparent view.
But I am not going to tell you how much time it saves me
just to be able to hit F12 and have all my terminal sessions open,
and then make them go away and be hidden,
but still available if I need them.
Yeah, I've tried out your Quake a little bit,
and it works in Genome Fine, it works in KDE.
Well, it integrates and kind of has a look and feel,
but as someone who doesn't use KDE very often,
I haven't really gotten into why your Quake might be better.
I believe the development's a little bit slower on it,
but I'm sure if you are used to that software,
it's better for you.
But I would try out both of them, see which one you like better,
and yeah, record an opposite or hackable radio,
because I know that Kent Helen's been looking for it,
and if you can help them out, record a summer short like this one,
that would be fantastic.
This is my yearly episode, but I might even do two this year,
it seems like we're a little short, so.
Good luck, happy hacking.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
For more information on the show and how to contribute your own shows,
visit hackerpublicradio.org.
Thanks for watching.
