The Ubuntu MATE team, fresh from going official community flavour status, have been busy detailing some of the handy new features shipping in Ubuntu MATE 15.04.

Among them is the addition of Tilda. Tilda is a ‘dropdown’ terminal application that’s similar to popular alternatives like guake but with a smaller memory footprint – something important for a distribution like Ubuntu MATE.

Dropdown terminals aren’t for everyone but have advantages. For one, they don’t require you to open an app, instead letting you hit a hot key (in Ubuntu MATE this will be F12) to open and close it.

Like other related terminal tools Tilda has a wealth of customisation and configuration options. And yes, it supports multiple tabs!

Explaining more about the feature, and demoing it in action on the Ubuntu MATE 15.04 desktop, is project lead Martin Wimpress.

How to Install Tilda in Ubuntu

Like the look and feel of Tilda? The good news is that you don’t have to be on Ubuntu MATE 15.04 to use it.

Tilda is available to install on most versions of Ubuntu (and related flavors) straight from the repositories.

Click to Install Tilda from the Ubuntu Software Center

To install Tilda using the command line open a new terminal window and run:

sudo apt-get install tilda

After installation has completed you can launch it from your desktop’s app menu.

The first time you run Tilda you’ll see a setup guide that will let you choose a keybinding. By default Tilda uses Super + F1.