Terminator

What is Terminator?

Terminator started in 2010 as a fork of the standard GNOME terminal. It quickly gained popularity among developers who need multiple shells in one window, and the project has remained active with frequent releases.

It is aimed at power users, sysadmins, and developers who spend most of their time in the command line. It works on all major Linux distributions and is available from the default package repositories.

Compared with Windows tools like MobaXterm, Terminator offers a lightweight, keyboard‑centric experience. It lacks the built‑in X11 server and graphical session manager that MobaXterm provides, but it gives you full control over terminal layouts and key bindings without extra overhead.

Best for: Power users who need to manage many shells in a single, split‑screen interface.

Key features of Terminator

• Multiple resizable panes in a single window
• Keyboard shortcuts for pane navigation and resizing
• Configurable profiles and color schemes
• Session persistence across restarts
• Ability to run commands in all panes simultaneously
• Customizable keybindings via a simple config file

Tips for Windows users

When moving from MobaXterm, keep in mind that Terminator uses a plain text config file (~/.config/terminator/config) rather than a GUI. Use Ctrl+Shift+E to split horizontally and Ctrl+Shift+O to split vertically. Shortcuts like Ctrl+Shift+W close a pane, and you can navigate with Alt+Arrow keys. File‑based workflows (e.g., using .bashrc or .zshrc) remain unchanged, but you’ll need to set up SSH keys manually if you used MobaXterm’s built‑in client.