This isn’t for everyone! However, users like myself and my team involved in software development and testing typically have several konsole terminal sessions open and spend much time switching between applications and terminals. On my machine this is compounded by the need to switch between desktops — you can see from the screenshot that I run KDE with 8 descktops.

If you know what I’m talking about, read on — otherwise enter your email in the “Keep Me Informed” box on the right and I’ll let you know about future posts which are sure to be more relevant to you if you are interested in running Linux on your PC!

OK, you’re interested… The first step is to see if Yakuake is already installed. Just open a console and type yakuake. If you see the small popup window informing you that you can call up the console with F12, skip the installation notes below.

Installation

Yakuake is available for most distributions so try your installer (yum, emerge apt etc). If this doesn’t work you can try going to the Yakuake home page to download the package for manual installation.

In action

The first time you run Yakuake it shows a small popup window informing you that you can call up the console with F12, and allows you to change the key binding. Since F12 is used by other programs, I enabled a previously unused special key on my keyboard (Ctl-Space).

Press it once, and a console pops down from the top of the screen; press it again, and it goes up and hides. Importantly, the console is available on all desktops.

Yakuake displays three buttons at the bottom right of the console: a plus sign, a down arrow, and a “close” icon. The first button makes Yakuake stay on screen even if it loses focus; that is, if you click elsewhere. The third button closes the current konsole session.

The second button lets you configure the program:

• Properties
  • size (width and height)
  • position
  • animation speed (set it to none for an instantaneous console)
• Options
  • Show/Hide tab bar
  • Retract when focus lost
  • Force background refresh
• Shortcuts
  • Change access key
  • Change control keys

Yakuake is built on KDE’s Konsole technology — right clicking on the terminal window brings up the normal konsole Settings menu.

In short, if your work requires that you generally have one or more konsole (termial sessions) window you should seriously consider installing Yakuake