A terminal emulator is computer software which emulates a dumb video terminal within some other display architecture.

The terminal window allows the user to access a console and all its applications such as command line interfaces (CLI) and text user interface software. Even with the sophistication of modern desktop environments packed with administrative tools, other utilities, and productivity software all sporting attractive graphical user interfaces, it remains the case that some tasks are still best undertaken with the command line.

Modern desktop environments come supplied with a number of terminal emulators already installed. In the case of GNOME, KDE, and XFCE (three popular desktop environments), the user is offered GNOME Terminal, Konsole, and Terminal respectively as the default terminal emulator. However, this does not necessarily mean that the pre-selected terminal emulator is best suited for your own specific requirements or your hardware.

There are a large number of terminal emulators to choose from, some offering a huge range of features, others aiming to be frugal with system resources. To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 22 excellent Linux terminal emulators. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone interested in exploiting the power of the shell. Here’s our recommendations.

Now, let’s explore the 22 terminal emulators at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources.

There are other terminal emulators available of course. Some of them are forks of the software featured here, adding little of real value.

Terminal Emulators Alacritty Hardware-accelerated terminal emulator Terminus Highly configurable terminal heavily inspired by Hyper Hyper Terminal emulator built with web technologies urxvt RXVT-like terminal emulator with Unicode support Tilix Advanced GTK3 tiling emulator Kitty Like Alacritty, Kitty offers hardware acceleration Guake Drop-down terminal for GNOME Termite Keyboard-centric VTE-based terminal Terminator Multiple GNOME terminals in one window st Simple terminal implementation for X which sucks less xterm Provides DEC VT102 and Tektronix 4014 compatible terminals Tilda Gtk based drop down terminal Extraterm Swiss army chainsaw of terminal emulators GNOME Terminal Terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment DomTerm Terminal emulator, REPL console, and screen multiplexer Xfce Terminal Lightweight and easy to use terminal emulator application Terminology Fast, lean and visually enhanced open source terminal emulator Konsole The KDE 4 terminal emulator Yakuake Drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology Sakura Vte-based terminal emulator ROXTerm VTE terminal emulator with tabs LXTerminal Lightweight terminal emulator based on GTK+ for the LXDE desktop

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.

Related articles