Guake dropdown terminal
Guake is a dropdown terminal for gtk based desktop environments like gnome, xfce etc.
Its a useful tool that brings up a terminal at the press of a key.
Guake is written in Python. It supports hotkeys, tabs, transparent backgrounds and other stuffs.
This post shows how to install and configure guake.
1. Install Guake
The first step is to install guake. Its available in the repositories, so install it right away.
$ sudo apt-get install guake
2. Fix error - "Guake can not init!"
After installation, try launching Guake from the Application Menu. It should be in the System category. On Xubuntu, Guake might fail to launch with the following error message
Guake can not init! Gconf Error. Have you installed guake.schemas properly?
The above error occurs, because the guake.schemas file is not found in the correct location. To fix this error, simply run the following commands
$ sudo mkdir /etc/gconf/schemas $ cd /etc/gconf/schemas/ $ sudo ln -s /usr/share/gconf/schemas/guake.schemas
Now try launching Guake again and it should work.
3. Configure Guake to automatically start at logon
On Xubuntu guake is not configured to startup at logon automatically.
This has to be done manually, but is not difficult.
Go to All Settings > Session and Startup. Go to "Application Autostart" tab and click Add.
Fill in the following details
Name - Guake Description - Guake dropdown terminal Command - /usr/bin/guake
Click OK and close it. Next time when you boot, Guake terminal should load right after logging in to the desktop.
You can also run the following command to configure guake to autostart at logon.
$ cp /usr/share/applications/guake.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/
It will add the Guake launcher to the XDG autostart directory. This is launched automatically when the desktop environment loads.
hi, i’m using Ubuntu system. Had difficulties when i try to download any package on the terminal through command line.
It responds: “E: Unable to locate package guake”. what should i do??
I can’t copy it to another folder or directory. I don’t get permission with the command chmod u+x or chmod 755 guake.desktop
You should use ‘sudo’ to give you the desired permissions.
I had the same problem in Zorin 9 so not xubuntu specific. It worked well for me.
Why does it take so much hand configuration to get this tool working? Is it packaged badly?
apparently this problem is xubuntu specific
Because it’s specifically packaged to be an integral part of the GNOME 3 desktop environment. So the problem is specific to any non-GNOME based distribution trying to import just a small part of that DE into their own, alien system. (like xfce, KDE, MATE, or lxde)