the Unity desktop environment, if Konsole has been installed, you can access it via Dash⇨Search and type Konsole. The Konsole Terminal shows up in the Dash home area as an application named Konsole. Click that icon to open the Konsole terminal emulator.
Figure 2.4 shows the Konsole Terminal. It was accessed on a KDE desktop environment in a CentOS Linux distribution.
Figure 2.4 The Konsole Terminal
Remember that, in most desktop environments, you can create a launcher to access applications such as the Konsole Terminal. The command you need to type for the launcher to start up the Konsole terminal emulator is konsole. Also, if the Konsole Terminal is installed, you can start it from another terminal emulator by typing konsole and pressing Enter.
The Konsole Terminal, similar to GNOME Terminal, has several configuration options provided by menus and shortcut keys. The following section describes these various options.
The Konsole Terminal menu bar contains the configuration and customization options you need to easily view and change features in your terminal emulation session. The following tables briefly describe the menu options and associated shortcut keys.
Tip
The Konsole Terminal provides a simple menu when you right-click in the active session area. Several menu items are available in this easy-to-access menu.
The File menu, shown in Table 2.10, provides options for starting a new tab in the current window or in a new window.
Table 2.10 The File Menu
When you first start the Konsole Terminal, the only profile listed in the menu is Shell. As more profiles are created and saved, their names appear in the menu list.
Note
As you read through these Konsole Terminal menu options, keep in mind that your Linux distribution's Konsole Terminal may have very different menu options available. This is because some Linux distributions have kept older versions of the Konsole Terminal emulation package.
The Edit menu, shown in Table 2.11, provides options for handling text in the session. Also, managing tab names is in this options list.
Table 2.11 The Edit Menu
Konsole provides an excellent method for tracking what function is taking place in each tab session. Using the Rename Tab menu option, you can name a tab to match its current task. This helps in tracking which open tab session is performing what function.
The View menu, shown in Table 2.12, contains items for controlling individual session views in the Konsole Terminal window. In addition, options are available that aid in monitoring terminal session activity.
Table 2.12 The View Menu
The Monitor for Silence menu option is used for indicating tab silence. Tab silence occurs when no new text appears in the current tab session for 10 seconds. This allows you to switch to another tab while waiting for application output to stop.
Tab activity, toggled by the Monitor for Activity option, issues a special message when new text appears in the tab session. This option allows you to be notified when output from an application occurs.
Konsole retains a history, formally called a scrollback buffer, for each tab. The history contains output text that has scrolled out of the terminal viewing area. By default, the last 1,000 lines in the scrollback buffer are retained. The Scrollback menu, shown in Table 2.13, contains options for viewing this buffer.
Table 2.13 The Scrollback Menu
You can scroll back through the scrollback buffer by simply using the scrollbar in the viewing area. Also, you can scroll back line by line by pressing the Shift+Up Arrow or scroll back a page (24 lines) at a time by pressing Shift+Page Up.
The Bookmarks menu options, shown in Table 2.14, provide a way to manage bookmarks set in the Konsole Terminal window. A bookmark enables you to save your active session's directory location and then easily return there in either the same session or a new session.
Table 2.14 The Bookmarks Menu
The Settings menu, shown in Table 2.15, allows you to customize and manage your profiles. Also, you can add a little more functionality to your current tab session. There are no shortcut keys to access these items.
Table 2.15 The Settings Menu
Configure Notifications allows you to associate specific events that can occur within a session with different actions. When one of the events occurs, the defined action (or actions) is taken.
The Help menu, shown in Table 2.16, provides the full Konsole handbook (if KDE handbooks were installed in your Linux distribution) and the standard About Konsole dialog box.
Table 2.16 The Help Menu
Rather extensive documentation is provided to help you use the Konsole terminal emulator package. In addition to help items, you are provided with a Bug Report form to submit to the Konsole Terminal developers when you encounter a program bug.
The Konsole terminal emulator package is young compared to another popular package, xterm. In the next section, we explore the “old-timer” xterm.
Using the xterm Terminal Emulator
The oldest and most basic of terminal emulation packages is xterm. The xterm package has been around since before the original days of X Window, a popular display server, and it's often included by default in distributions.
Although xterm is a full terminal emulation package, it doesn't require many resources (such as memory) to operate. Because of this, the xterm package is still popular in Linux distributions designed to run on older hardware. Some graphical desktop environments use it as the default terminal emulation package.
Although it doesn't offer many fancy features, the xterm package does one thing extremely well: It emulates older terminals, such as the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VT102, VT220, and Tektronix 4014 terminals. For the VT102 and VT220 terminals, xterm can even emulate the VT series of color control codes, allowing you to use color in your scripts.
Note
The DEC VT102 and VT220 were dumb text terminals popular for connecting to Unix systems in the 1980s and early 1990s. A VT102/VT220 could display text and display rudimentary graphics using block mode graphics. This style of terminal
