Always keep a terminal at hand

A lot can be done in a Linux terminal. You can launch any "pathed" application or scripts, and thus get info, activate features and whatnot. It then makes sense to always have a terminal window ready for action, right?

In this article, I'll explain the two different methods I'm using, depending if I want to do light-weight or heavier stuff.

Global shortcut
Since you'll be using both hands on your keyboard when working in the terminal, it does make sense to start the work with a first keystroke. To know how to enable a global hotkey shortcut, just read this other article of mine. In GNOME, the command to launch would be gnome-terminal.

I use a dedicated terminal when I have a lot of terminal work to do, like testing commands for an work-in-progress script, or when moving or ch'moding files, or any other more-than-one-or-two-commands task.

Also, to avoid having to deal with a ton of open windows, don't forget you can open multiple console tabs in the same window by using the Ctrl+Shift+T shortcut while in gnome-terminal.

tilda
tilda is a GNOME quake-like console. You can "pull it down" by pressing a dedicated shortcut (I like to use F12), and hide it with the same hotkey. And, just like in gnome-terminal, you can work with multiple tabs, again by using the Ctrl+Shift+T shortcut.

You can install tilda in Ubuntu from the universe repository (which may not be enabled on a default installation). From a terminal:

sudo apt-get install tilda

You can configure a couple of settings either by right-clicking the tilda console and selecting "Preferences", or by launching tilda in configuration mode (-C command-line switch). You'll be able to select the global shortcut that will show or hide tilda, the position and size of the console, if you want tilda to start hidden (nice if you set it to launch with your GNOME session), etc. Also, if tilda ever segfaults on you when you try to launch it, start it in configuration mode. It always worked for me.

For the ones of you who prefer KDE over GNOME, you'll probably prefer using an alternative more suited to your environment, namely, yakuake.

I prefer this unobstrusive, not-many-lines-displayed option (tilda) when I want to do a quick operation, like mount or unmout my file server shares, install an application through apt-get, or something like that. The tilda window shows fast, gets the job done, then gets out of the way.

Other options
There are may more ways to have a console ready at hand. You can have a terminal as your desktop background, add a gnome-terminal launcher to any of your panel, auto-launch a gnome-terminal with your session, etc.

Personally, I use the two methods I described, and they mostly fill my eager console needs. What about you? How do you keep a terminal at hand? Don't be afraid, share your wisdom and tricks, we're all listening.