Terminus – A Web Technology Based Modern Terminal

Terminus is a cross-platform, open source, web technology based Terminal for modern age. It is heavily inspired from Hyper, a beautiful terminal built on web technologies. Unlike the traditional terminals, Terminus ships with some cool features by default. It is fully customizable with multiple app themes and color schemes for the terminal. We can spawn or hide Terminus using a global hotkey. It keeps the current directory in all newly opened tabs. You can also extend the functionality of Terminus by installing plugins.

Features

Concerning about the features, we can list the following:

• Theming and color schemes.
• Configurable hotkey schemes.
• GNU Screen style hotkeys available by default.
• Full Unicode support including double-width characters.
• Doesn't choke on fast-flowing outputs.
• Tab persistence on macOS and Linux.
• Proper shell-like experience on Windows including tab completion (thanks, Clink!).
• CMD, PowerShell, Cygwin, Git-Bash and Bash on Windows support.
• Default Linux style hotkeys for copy (Ctrl+Shift+C) and paste (Ctrl+Shift+V).
• Multi-platform support. It supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Free and open source.

Install Terminus On Linux

Terminus is available in AUR, so you can install it on Arch-based systems using any AUR helper programs, for example YaY, like below.

$ yay -S terminus-terminal

On RPM-based systems such RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, install the following prerequisites:

$ sudo yum install libXScrnSaver screen tmux

Then, download the latest rpm from the releases page and install it as shown below.

$ wget https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus/releases/download/v1.0.0-alpha.41/terminus-1.0.0-alpha.41.rpm

$ rpm -Uvh terminus-1.0.0-alpha.41.rpm

On DEB based systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, install the following prerequisites:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gdebi

And then, download the latest deb file from the releases page and install it like below.

$ wget https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus/releases/download/v1.0.0-alpha.41/terminus_1.0.0-alpha.41_amd64.deb

$ sudo gdebi terminus_1.0.0-alpha.41_amd64.deb

Terminus Usage

Launch Terminus either from the menu or application launcher or from the default terminal itself. This is how the default interface of Terminus application looks like.

Terminus

As you can see, the home screen of Terminus application offers two options, the first one is to open a new terminal tab and the second one is to open Settings window where you can customize the appearance and functionality of Terminus application.

To open the Terminal, just click on "New terminal" tab.

New tab in Terminus Terminal

You can work in the newly opened terminal tab as the way you do in the default traditional terminal. As you may noticed, terminus offers text colorization feature. To open a new terminal tab, just click the plus (+) sign next to the existing tab. To close any opened tabs, hover the mouse cursor on the title bar of the tab and simply click the X sign.

Customize Terminus

To me, terminus interface looks beautiful by default. However, you can customize the appearance, change the hotkeys, install plugins etc. All customization can be done from the Settings section.

Open the Settings window either by clicking on the Settings tab in home screen or the three horizontal arrows on the top of Terminus window.

Application:

This is the global customization section.

Customize Terminus Terminal

In this section, we can customize the following:

• Change Terminus application theme.
• Modify the position of the tabs, top or bottom.
• Change the Terminus window frame. You can set a custom window frame or your OS native window frame.
• Set the position to dock the Terminal. You can dock the Terminal on top, left, right, bottom.
• If you're not happy with offered color themes, you can define your own custom CSS as per your wish.

Hotkeys:

In this section, we can define the keyboard shortcuts to use Terminus.

Keyboard shortcuts for Terminus Terminal

As you may noticed, most of the hotkeys are same as screen utility keyboard shortcuts.

Plugins:

Terminus is highly extensible using plugins. You can enhance the functionality of the Terminus application by installing various plugins.

Terminus plugins

By default, few plugins comes preinstalled with Terminus. However, you can install new plugins. To install new plugins, you must install npm. For example, on DEB  based systems, you can install npm as shown below.

$ sudo apt-get install npm

Terminal:

Terminus appearance settings

This section offers many options to customize your Terminal.

• Change the default appearance of Terminal window.
• Change terminal fonts.
• Set color scheme and background to Terminal.
• Modify the cursor shape.
• Enable/disable Terminal bell sounds.
• Enable/disable cursor blink.
• Change the working directory when open a terminal tab. Default is $HOME directory.
• Change default shell.
• Enable/disable "Copy on select" option. That means when you select a text, it will automatically copy it to the clipboard.
• Change right click behavior. You can define whether a menu should be opened or paste the clipboard items when you right click on the Terminal.
• Auto-open Terminal window on Terminus application start.

If you're looking for a beautiful, fully functional modern Terminal, Terminus is worth trying.

Resources:

• Terminus website
• Terminus GitHub Page