How to get a "real" quake-style terminal in gnome with Compiz

[ElTimo]

If you're like me, you use the terminal almost as often as you use GUI's, so a drop-down terminal is a godsend. KDE has Yakuake, which is great if you use KDE (and I did for a while). If you use Gnome, though, it would seem that you're out of luck. The two options available are Tilda and Guake. Tilda can be rather buggy, but is overall very similar to Yakuake in its configurability. The bugginess really...well, bugs me, though, so I took a look at Guake. Guake feels much more stable, but it doesn't have the "drop-down" animation that i've come to love. There is a workaround for this though.

1) Download the source from here and do the usual song and dance to install from source
2) In CCSM, go to the "Open" tab under Animations.
3) Add a new entry to the listbox
4) Select Burn for the effect, and set the duration to around 750-850 ms.
5) In the "Options" field, type the following:

fire_life=0.1, fire_particles=100, fire_size=0.1, fire_slowdown=0.1, fire_direction=1

6) For "Window Match" put this:

type=normal&name=guake

7) Click close.
8) Double-click on the first entry in the listbox, and add the following to the end of the Window Match field:

&!(name=guake)

and click close
9) Repeat the above steps for the "Close" tab

Now start up Guake and hit F12 to see the pretty new effect.

I apologize to any veteran users I may have offended by posting a how-to simply for adding eye candy. :P

[SGSeries2]

That's some pretty slick work. I hadn't thought of that. I'm currently using yakuake, which is a pretty cool app all in itself, but I missed the transparent effect you get in kde when you use it in gnome/xfce. I just couldn't live without the drop-down effect, so I stuck it out with yakuake, sans transparency. Problem solved.

Thanks!

[JamesNewbie]

Does installing it with yum mess up steps 2 - 5?
And what is "CCSM" that is mentioned in step 2?

Thanks

[SGSeries2]

From http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/CCSM:

CCSM, short for CompizConfig Settings Manager, is a configuration tool for Compiz Fusion. It is used to configure the many plugins included in Compiz and Compiz Fusion, as well as the use of various profiles and intergrating better with existing desktop settings

As for your other q, I'm not under fedora atm, so I couldn't say for sure, but I see no reason why it would make any difference if you installed guake from yum or from source. I was just under the impression from the post that guake isn't actually in the repos... is it?

The trick can technically be done to any program that consistantly creates a normal window with the same name. (In this case, it's guake. Man, I have a hard time printing 'guake' instead of 'quake'.)

[ElTimo]

What do you mean by "it?" If you mean Compiz-Fusion, the only way I can think of that doesn't require obscene amounts of work would be via yum (unless you get off on installing from source, in which case you should switch to Gentoo :P). If you mean Guake, It doesn't really matter, as Compiz only looks at the window type to see if it's a "normal" window, and the window name (not the title) to see if it is called guake.

Cheers

[vallimar]

Guake is in rawhide, might be in updates now too.
It's an outdated version, however.

[M4rc0]

Thank you ElTimo ! It looks very nice!!

I was using glide specifically to the guake window only, to get a different effect than for windows.
But this combination is the best so far!

I just changed the duration for 400 to open and 350 to close

Do you mind if I ask, does the transparency of your Guake window works?
Mine will be transparent only according to the current desktop background, it won't "show" anything below the window.

EDIT: Sorry, just realized this thread is from 2008. But anyway... I need more coffee.