Yakuake is a Kde based, drop-down Quake style emulator based on Qt. A Quake style terminal emulator is not a new concept. A few weeks back we reviewed Guake, a Quake style terminal emulator. Guake is a great program while Yakuake is an alternative.

WHAT IS IT AND WHAT DOES IT DO

Main Functionality

Yakuake is a Qt based, Quake style terminal emulator for Linux. Yakuake is also part of the KDE family.

Pros

• Smooth rolling down onto your screen
• Supports tabbed interface
• Dimensions and animation speed can be configured
• Can be skinned
• DCOP and D-Bus interface
• Transparency support
• Custom profile support

Cons

• Nothing much I could think of except that the last stable update was in 2012

Discussion

Yakuake is not the first terminal emulator based upon a Quake drop-down style, but it is the most attractive. A few weeks ago, I reviewed Guake. While I thought that Guake was a very well performing program, I was very disappointed in the way it looked. It looked very basic, and overall it just wasn’t that attractive.

I’m pretty happy with Yakuake. It’s very attractive, and I much prefer the Qt implementation over the GTK implementation of Guake. Yakuake is brilliantly fluid, the skins are very good looking, and has excellent tab support. For a time, I used Yakuake for my day to day terminal command shell, but after using it, I decided that I much prefer terminator.

Even still, Yakuake is something that I use from time to time, and every time I install it, I feel right at home. Yakuake is a very well put together program. It’s a little disappointing that the last update was released in 2012, but seeing as how it really doesn’t need many features added, not having any updates doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing.

By no means is Yakuake a terrible program, but it’s just not something that I feel comfortable switching to any time soon. I’m just very happy with Terminator, and no terminal on Linux that can quite deliver the same amount of features that I crave. I like the tiled nature of Terminator, and it’s just something that nobody has been able to deliver. There hasn’t been an update for Yakuake for a very long time, but as soon as it happens, you’ll be sure that I’ll be updating it, and checking out the new features. It’s not my terminal of choice, but it is vastly superior to Guake. Since the concept is very simple for a terminal, the main line of judgement is how the program acts, and how it looks.

CONCLUSION AND DOWNLOAD LINK

If you’ve tried out Guake, and you’re still looking for a Quake style terminal emulator for Linux, Yakuake is a program that you need to try out. It is very fluid, and very well put together. It might not have amazing and breathtaking features, but it is humble and classy. Sometimes, that’s just what you want in a terminal emulator.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: v2.9.9

Supported OS: Any Linux distro

Supported software repositories: Any Linux distro that supports KDE

Download size: Unknown

Is it portable? No

Yakuake homepage