Ubuntu – Desktop Terminal

Terminal integrated with your desktop, through Devil’s Pie.

As earlier stated in my changelog, I wanted to show you how the gnome terminal can be integrated right onto your desktop (Instead of popping up in a window). How this is done is through virtual transparency and several small tweaks to remove “unneeded” graphic like the menubar, titlebar and scroll. It’s all done through an application called Devil’s Pie.

I suppose saying you can run the terminal “with” the desktop would be to lie, as you can’t really communicate with the desktop, Devil’s Pie creates an invisible overlay for the preferred application (In this case that would be terminal), which unable for example right-clicking to bring up the right-click menu on the desktop and it hides any files/icons showing on the work-space you run the terminal in.

I’ve taken bolts and bits from different web-pages and blogs to create what in my opinion and need is helpful, easy to understand and fairly (hopefully) easy to re-enable if the need ever be.

Here is what you need to do

Create a new terminal profile for your desktop-terminal

Open terminal (Alt+F2 gnome-terminal) >
Edit – Profiles > New > Profile name: NameOfTerminal (I name mine DesktopConsole, I will use this name later in this how-to, so remember to change the name with your own if you go another way) > Base on – Default
General tab – Uncheck Show menubar by default in new terminals
Title and command tab – Change initial title to YourInitialTitle (I name mine “DesktopConsole”, I will use this name later on in the how-to, remember to change the name with your own)
Color tab – Edit this to your own likings, I use “White on black” and transparency to 100% since this suits my needs with my current wallpaper the best
Scrolling tab – Disable the scrollbar

Now close the edit profile and profile windows, let the terminal run.

Download and install Devilspie

As Devilspie resides within Ubuntu’s repository you only need one line written into the terminal  sudo apt-get install devilspie

Create a hidden devilspie folder in your home directory, this is done through terminal – mkdir ~/.devilspie now you need to create a script that devilspie will gather information on how to base your terminal-window from gedit (or nano) ~/.devilspie/DesktopConsole.ds

You should now have a open gedit (or nano) window named DesktopConsole.ds. Paste the following code into the document
# Are comments done by me for this how to, remove them in the actual script. /start and /stop indicates the script. Copy the text after /start and before /stop.

/start
(if
(matches (window_name) “DesktopConsole”) # Change “DesktopConsole” if you rename
(begin
(set_workspace 4) # I use set_workspace 1
(below)
(undecorate)
(skip_pager)
(skip_tasklist)
(wintype “utility”)
(geometry “450×350+795+605″) # More about geometry here
)
)
/stop

Save the document (If in nano you save (Overwrite) with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X)

Make Devilspie and terminal to run on startup

Open Sessions (System > Preferences > Sessions)

Click Add
Name: devilspie (Or add whatever you want to, just to remember what this process is)
Command: devilspie
Description: Describe the process as you want

Click Add
Name: Terminal (Or add what you prefer, just make sure it comes prioritized after devilspie, so the name has to start with a later letter in the alphabet)
Command: gnome-terminal –window-with-profile=DesktopConsole (Double – before window, profile name must be the same as the terminal-profile you created)
Description: Describe the process as you want

You’re done now, restart your computer to see the terminal integrated with your desktop. You can quickly restart X by doing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace.

You can change the color and window-settings in the terminal-profile to suit your needs. If you ever for example use a light background, you should use darker colors on the terminal and vice versa. There’s tons of commands and manuals on how devilspie works over at the devilspie wiki.

I’ve referred to Ryan’s (Known as ://) Terminal on Your Desktop and LinuxHaxor.net’s Configurating Linux Terminal to Work as a Transparent Wallpaper as well as the Devilspie wiki.