As you dig deeper into this, you will realize that, as always, there are many competing applications. The most common desktop environments (GNOME/KDE) have settled on the GNOME terminal and Konsole.

A terminal wraps a command shell, and a lot of them use GNU Bash by default, but there's a wide variety here as well. As for me, I've come across zsh (default for macOS), dash (default for Ubuntu/Debian /bin/sh, but nor the interactive terminals), but there was never a really good reason to switch to something else.

If you do plan to use something else, I would advise you to keep in mind that most support the POSIX shell standard and to try to not steer away if possible. For instance, in case of Bash one can check deviations via checkbashisms or the POSIX mode.

I'm mainly using GNOME, and I've settled for the GNOME terminal, BASH for shell/command interpreter.

Here are a list of things I look for when trying out a new terminal:

• Multiple tabs support, also switching between tabs
• Keyboard shortcuts support, as I'm trying to avoid the mouse
• Shell integration
• Themes support

Here are a few things that I've decided to customize my prompt for:

• Naming terminal tabs - I use multiple tabs frequently and like to have meaningful names for them. Unfortunately the only way to set it up in the GNOME terminal

is via customizing the prompt.

• Basic git integration (show the branch name) - I've learned the hard way that it's easy to push to the wrong place.
• Make my local machine stand out - I connect via ssh to remote machines and I like to output local instead of my host name.

Here's how I achieve this. One can simply add the below excerpt to their .bashrc file in their home directory.

# __git_ps1 relies on the bash completion package
PS1="\[\033[01;32m\]\u@local\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\\[\033[01;36m\]\$(__git_ps1)\[\033[00m\]\$ "

# Basically reuse the idea from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/177572/how-to-rename-terminal-tab-title-in-gnome-terminal
function set-title() {
  if [[ -z "$ORIG" ]]; then
    ORIG=$PS1
  fi
  TITLE="\[\e]2;$*\a\]"
  PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}
}

I basically have to tweak the PS1 environment variable. If you want to understand it, the starting point is here, also check the escape codes.

I've outlined a simplified explanation below (only special control variables explained, the rest is mostly inserted as is):

\[\033[01;32m\]

switch color to bold green

\u

insert user

[\033[00m\]

reset color to default

[\033[01;34m\]

switch color to bold blue

\w

insert working directory

\[\033[01;36m\]

switch color to bold cyan

\$(__gitps1)

function available via bash-completion, see here

[\033[00m\]

reset color to default

Afterwards, I have a reusable bash function set-title defined, which can be used as below:

set-title new title

I recommend installing bash-completion packages, which provides TAB completion for various commands.

sudo apt install bash-completion

If you want to know more about the underlying details, please check the documentation

If you find yourself repeating a set of useful commands, I recommend saving them in specific files. You can then use shellcheck to verify them.

sudo apt install shellcheck

Aside from the usual suspects, there are few tools that I expect would make your life easier

ag

code searching tool, also see rg

fzf

fuzzy finder (free search)

mc

keyboard first file explorer (you might already be familiar with it, as it's a clone of Norton Commander from the MS-DOS days)

tmux

run multiple application in one terminal tab (specially useful for remote logins)

jq

simplify interaction with JSON (configuration) files, see also yq for other file formats

For much of day to day things, you can find a lot of examples with a simple online search.

As your needs become more customized, you will need to get a better understanding of your command interpreter.

There is a lot of documentation available, I will highlight a few I looked over the years:

Beginners guide

very old beginner's guide

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

a more advanced tutorial

The manual

best documentation if you know what you're looking for