5 Linux terminal apps better than your default - and they're all free

Lilia Maloratskiy/500px/Getty Images Back in my early days of Linux, the terminal was a necessity. Now, the GUIs are so advanced, user-friendly, and powerful, that you could go your entire Linux career and never touch a terminal window. But when you do need to dive into those commands, you'll want a terminal app that's better than the stock default your distribution most likely uses. Also: Finally, a Linux laptop with a brilliant display and performance that rivals my MacBook Fortunately, there are plenty of options, and here are my five favorites (all of which are free and can be installed from your distribution's default repositories). 1. Guake Guake is just cool. It's a drop-down terminal client that, when you hit F12 on your keyboard, will roll down from the top of your display. When you're done, hit F12 again and it'll hide itself away until you need it next. Guake is also highly configurable. You can tweak the startup and tabs, the main window, the shell, scrolling, the app ... Read full article.