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Possible Duplicate:
What is a terminal and how do I open and use it?
How do I access the Terminal?

I just got ubuntu running on my computer and now I am ready to write a program...but I can't figure out how to open a command terminal. I guess I don't know where to find which version I am running either. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

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hydro
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    Amazingly, I don't think this is a duplicate question. Wow – Jjed Sep 03 '12 at 23:16
  • I was using a different version last week that had a nice little icon on the top of the screen that just launched it. – hydro Sep 03 '12 at 23:19
  • @Mik Hm, I think closing that one was a mistake. "What is a terminal" and "How to open a terminal" are two separate questions. – Jjed Sep 03 '12 at 23:21
  • @JacobJohanEdwards But the answers there do explain how to open a Terminal...and it would be strange for an answer to that question on Ask Ubuntu not to explain how to open/access terminals in Ubuntu. Plus, "How do I open a terminal window?" is explicitly part of the master question. – Eliah Kagan Sep 03 '12 at 23:54
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    @EliahKagan Yes, but that is against the principals of Q&A. Questions should not be a FAQ. It does not follow that the questions "What is X" and "Where is X" should be consolidated. – Jjed Sep 04 '12 at 00:54
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    @JacobJohanEdwards You may want to post on meta about this. I think you're construing the appropriate scope of a question far more narrowly than is commonplace on Ask Ubuntu or any Stack Exchange site. But I'm just one person; you may be able to persuade the community at large otherwise. – Eliah Kagan Sep 04 '12 at 01:18
  • I apologize if my question was out of place. I did research prior to asking; however, having reviewed the "How-do-i-access-the-terminal" link, it would have answered my question. I did not mean to cause controversy just needed help. Please let me know if the question in general was okay and if not why. Thank you. – hydro Sep 04 '12 at 01:50
  • @EliahKagan you and Jacob both seem to be correct; meta discussions seem to indicate that we shouldn't point simple questions to wiki's that read like manuals (AKA don't tell the user to RTFM), The "what is a terminal and how do I open and use it" while simple, does read a bit like a manual. Moreover, the answer here provided by oli is more complete than what's listed there and thus marking this question as a duplicate could be considered questionable. – virtualxtc Jan 15 '14 at 06:30

2 Answers2

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You can either:

  • Open the Dash by clicking the Ubuntu icon in the upper-left, type "terminal", and select the Terminal application from the results that appear.
  • Hit the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt+T.
Jjed
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There are a couple of methods:

  • If you're running Unity: open the dash, type terminal, hit Return.
  • If you're on the old style menus, Applications → Accessories → Terminal.
  • Control + Alt + T.
  • Alt + F2, gnome-terminal, Return.
  • For a TTY: Control + Alt + F1..7.

If you're using Ubuntu variants, you might need to substitute gnome-terminal for xfce4-terminal, konsole or if you've gone off-piste, terminator (my fav) or if you're running out of options, xterm. There are others — many, many others — but I doubt you'll ever find them on a *buntu default install.

The TTYs are your last, best hope if you desperately need some form of terminal. Just be aware that they're not conscious of the graphical environment so if you want to launch something graphical from one, you'll need to run export DISPLAY=:0 first. Or adapt that if you're running more than one X display.

Oli
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