I’m probably not the first person to think of this, but it is amusing all the same.

That’s screen, running in a vertical split inside Yakuake. In case you’ve not used it before, Yakuake is a drop-down terminal emulator that works in the same fashion as a few famous first-person shooter games. Ordinarily it’s not something that is particularly entertaining to me (mostly because of the KDE underpinnings, which might be avoidable), but for some reason I thought it might be nice to anchor a screen session in there.

Like I said, I’m not the first person to think of it (I never am the first person to think of things), but now that it’s in place, it’s rather fun. As you can see I run a Windows XP-Classic-esque desktop in Arch, and while it’s a complete mismatch for that look, it is very nice indeed to be able to poke one button and check rtorrent or htop. Press the same key again, and it rolls back up into the heavens, out of the way and out of sight.

Of course, Yakuake as it stands supports multiple terminal instances anyway, so screen is hardly necessary there. Terminal emulators are just too darned flexible these days. Adding screen or dvtm or both to a tabbed emulator is multiplying your work potential in a mind-boggling way. …

I’ll probably uninstall Yakuake as soon as I get finished writing this, but it’s a curious idea. Rather than kicking out a terminal window every time I need to check rtorrent and then detaching it when I’m done, this can just show it continuously. My console “screensavers” work just fine, mouse controls are supported in mc, the vertical and horizontal splits work … everything as it ought to be.

Just appearing, and disappearing, in roller-blind fashion. Cool. 😀