Do you use the terminal a lot in Linux? With only Compiz Fusion and Gnome-Terminal you can have a transparent terminal that looks like it is part of your desktop. (See the screenshot at the end of this post.) I found the idea for this over at Ubuntu Unleashed, my instructions here are slightly different.

You need to create a new gnome-terminal profile for the transparent terminal. Create a new profile in Edit>Profiles>New called trans. Edit the new profile and set these options:

  • General>Cursor Blinks: Off
  • General>Show menubar…: Off
  • Title and Command>Initial Title: trans
  • Title and Command>Dynamically-set title: Is not displayed
  • Colours>Build-in schemes: Black on White
  • Effects>Transparent Background: On
  • Effects>transparency slider>None
  • Scrolling>Scrollbar is: Disabled

Open the CompizConfig Settings Manager and make these changes:

  • Make sure the Regex Matching and Window Rules plugins are enabled.
  • Open the Window Decoration plugin and change the Decoration windows field to !title=trans.
  • Open the Window Rules plugin:
    • change these fields to title=trans: Skip taskbar, Skip pager, Below, Sticky, Non resizable windows, Non minimizable windows, Non maximizable windows, Non closable windows, Widget.
    • Add a new item to the Fixed Size Windows list: Sized Windows = trans, and the width and height that you want for the terminal.
  • Open the Place Windows plugin and add to Windows with fixed positions list. Positioned windows = trans and set the X and Y coordinates you want the terminal at.

The transparent terminal should start with this command:

gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=trans

I tried to set up the terminal to start when I log in, but ran into a problem. The terminal would load before Compiz Fusion, which causes it to not be positioned properly. I created a script to launch the transparent terminal:

#!/bin/sh
sleep 10s
gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=trans

It delays for 10 seconds, and by that time Compiz Fusion is loaded. Just run the script on login with System>Preferences>Sessions and it should work.

Desktop Terminal




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