How to Set default terminal/shell to Terminator on Ubuntu/Debian

Learn how to set terminator as your default terminal on ubuntu/debian using update-alternatives utlity.

In this blog post, we will be setting Terminator as our default terminal on Ubuntu/Debian based systems. If you want to know more about Terminator and how to install it, please refer to our blog post here.

Terminator as default shell

In ubuntu/debian based systems we have a update-alternatives utility. This utility is responsible for setting default applications for various purposes, like default browser, media player and terminal as well.

We can set terminator as our default shell using update-alternatives utility. Open any terminal on your system, and run the following command :

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

This command will give you an output like this :

There are 2 choices for the alternative x-terminal-emulator (providing /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator).
 
  Selection    Path                             Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper   50        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper   50        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/terminator               40        manual mode
 
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

Here, we have 2 different terminals installed on our system, the current default is gnome-terminal. To set terminator as our default shell type in the selection id, which in our case for terminator it's 2.

Type in 2, and hit enter. This should update your default shell to Terminator.

Verify if Terminator is your default shell

You can verify the change by hitting the same command again, it should give you an output like this :

There are 2 choices for the alternative x-terminal-emulator (providing /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator).
 
  Selection    Path                             Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/bin/terminator               50        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper   40        manual mode
* 2            /usr/bin/terminator               50        manual mode
 
Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

and, that's it! Enjoy the multi-window support of your new default Terminal.