2004.09_Konsole-Terminal Emulation from the Desktop.pdf

LINUX USER

Konsole

Input Assistant

Although KDE is normally the place to look for GUI-based

tools, everyone needs a terminal emulation. Konsole gives

users easy access to the command line on the desktop.

A lthough you can use the GUI for

most tasks, the command line

can still be a useful tool. Konsole

( http://konsole.kde.org/ ) is a terminal

emulation for KDE. There is no need to

install Konsole , as the program is part of

the KDE basic package.

To launch Konsole , select System | Ter-

minal | Konsole in the KDE start menu,

or click the symbol in the panel. Launch-

ing Konsole opens up a shell and puts

you in your home directory. Clicking on

the New button in the lower left corner

of the window will start a new session.

Just like any other KDE program, Kon-

sole can be controlled by using menus

and dialogs. To set Konsole up, select Set-

tings | Configure Konsole.. . In the General

tab, you can opt for a blinking cursor,

specify the characters to be treated as

part of a word when you double-click, or

set the interval for inactive windows.

The Schema tab provides a selection of

pre-configured schemes, that is colored

backgrounds, different fonts and font

sizes. You can point and click to change

the appearance of your Konsole – and

even opt for a trans-

parent window as

shown in Figure 1.

Sessions

The Session tab

allows you to set up

Konsole for different

tasks. You can select

Midnight Commander

to launch the file

manager automatically in a child win-

dow, assuming that the Midnight

Commander application is installed. Root

Konsole issues the su command, and

prompts you for the password, before

allowing you to assume root privileges.

Another thing you can do with Settings

| Configure Konsole…| Session is to set

up a session to run a particular program

with specific parameters when launched.

To do this, enter the command in the

Execute textbox (see Figure 2). You can

use the pull-down menus to set the

keytab assignments for the session,

assign a different icon, or color scheme.

To make the changes permanent select

Settings | Save Session … .

The View menu allows you to

monitor a session for activity. If

you have multiple sessions run-

ning, this allows you to check for

output in minimized window by

displaying a light-bulb icon for the

window icon in the panel.

Figure 1: Some Konsoles are transparent.

Besides the typical cut and paste func-

tions, the Edit menu has another

important Konsole function: Find in His-

tory… . Users typically browse the history

list in the Konsole window, unless they

have disabled the history via Settings |

History … . This function can save you a

lot of work.

If you need to save the input and out-

put for a session for perusal at a later

date, select Save History As… to store the

session in a text file. The Edit menu also

allows you to send signals to active pro-

grams, such as Suspend task (STOP) or

Continue task (CONT) .

Just like a Web browser, Konsole pro-

vides a Bookmarks menu. Setting a

bookmark allows you to access a specific

directory by clicking, for example. You

can launch the bookmark editor ( Book-

marks | Edit Bookmarks ) (see Figure 3)

to manually enter addresses on remote

machines, such as ssh://user@server-

name or telnet://servername .

■

Figure 2: Setting up a session.

Figure 3: Using the bookmark editor to edit Konsole bookmarks.

September 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

Konsole

BY STEFANIE TEUFEL

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