How-To Geek
Set the Default Terminal Emulator on Ubuntu Linux
Ubuntu has a number of terminal emulators that you can use, including xterm and the gnome terminal. If you install the kubuntu desktop package you can also use konsole under ubuntu.
Setting the default terminal emulator is easy by using the update-alternatives command. Open a terminal window and type in the following command:
sudo update-alternatives –config x-terminal-emulator
You’ll see something similar to the following, although you may not see as many options on your system:
$ sudo update-alternatives –config x-terminal-emulator
There are 7 alternatives which provide `x-terminal-emulator’.
Selection Alternative
———————————————–
1 /usr/bin/xterm
2 /usr/bin/uxterm
3 /usr/bin/koi8rxterm
4 /usr/bin/lxterm
*+ 5 /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper
6 /usr/bin/konsole
7 /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal.wrapperPress enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:
Just type in the number of the selection and hit enter. Now when you launch the terminal via the menu item, or by typing in x-terminal-emulator at the command line, you will see the correct window pop up.
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Comments (4)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 12/5/06
this really worked on my asus eee. i set mine to konsole. i’m a noob and don’t know the differences between terminal emulators.
thanks for this tip.
“$ sudo update-alternatives –config x-terminal-emulator”
should be
“$ sudo update-alternatives –-config x-terminal-emulator”
If you had two dashes there originally, I apologize. It looks like one.
You can do this also with user level privileges from:
System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications
This idea is from:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=198207
I switched mine to konsole because you can change the default character encoding for it with user level privileges.
Doesn’t read my .Xdefaults when I change to urxvt.