Starting Terminator with split screens is quite simple: Just store a layout and start Terminator with the --layout <your layout> option.

Opscomplete powered by

Save money by migrating from AWS to our fully managed hosting in Germany.

• Trusted by over 100 customers
• Ready to use with Ruby, Node.js, PHP
• Proactive management by operations experts

Read more Show archive.org snapshot

However, if you want to run custom commands in your terminals, you need to do some work to keep these terminals from closing after a command exits. You accomplish this by tweaking bash to run a command before actually starting.

Pimp your .bashrc

Add this to the end of .bashrc:

# hack to keep a bash open when starting it with a command
[[ $startup_cmd ]] && { declare +x $startup_cmd; history -s "$startup_cmd $startup_args"; eval "$startup_cmd $startup_args"; }

Store a Terminator layout

1. Open Terminator preferences
2. Go to the Layouts tab
3. Press "Add"
4. Add a custom command to each split terminal. Format:

command = 'env startup_cmd="<your_command>" startup_args="<your_arguments>" bash'

Edit Terminator boot command

In case you ALWAYS want to run Terminator with certain options, run sudo vim /usr/share/applications/terminator.desktop and change the Exec line to this:

Exec=terminator --layout <your_layout> --maximise --working-directory=<working_directory>