Gnome Terminal tabs ugly and oversized

Both gnome terminal and terminator (which I am using on my laptop these days) can be customised to look very pretty. By using full screen and keeping desktop clutter down to a minimum it's possible to get a good-sized area to work in, even on my little EeePC.

However, there is one element that I don't seem to be able to control. Gnome's tabs are massively oversized and ugly at best. They don't fit into the theme at all which looks silly, but for me the biggest problem is the screen real estate that is wasted. On a small laptop screen in particular, it's a real problem.

Is there a way to change these tabs? I realize it's possible to put them up the side of the window, but then they take up even more space!

If this isn't possible with theme-ing or gnome configuration, are there any terminal programs like terminator that can handle the tabs themselves? (Ideally in a more elegant fashion!)

Solution 1:

As pointed out by JanC, terminator uses the default gtk theme on your system. It is true that the problem can be solved by putting close_button_on_tab = False in your ~/.config/terminator/config Also, you could change the gtk theme. Or, you could define a special gtk setting specially for terminator. To do that, add the following lines to your gtkrc file:

style "notebook" = "default"
{
    xthickness = 0
    ythickness = 0
}

widget_class "terminator*.GtkNotebook"       style "notebook"
class "terminator*.GtkNotebook"              style "notebook"

Observe that you are modifying the standard Gtk widget called "GtkNotebook". This is whats responsible for tabs. If you want this to work in every application (not just terminator) then use instead:

widget_class "*GtkNotebook"       style "notebook"
class "*GtkNotebook"              style "notebook"

This will then affect all applications. To change the color of the text in the tab, use:

style "notebook_maybelabel" = "default"
{ 
   fg[NORMAL]        = "#0000AA"
   text[NORMAL]        = "#0000AA"
}

widget_class "terminator*.GtkNotebook*"       style "notebook_maybelabel"
class "terminator*.GtkNotebook*"              style "notebook_maybelabel"

I am not a Gtk expert, and this advice may contain errors.

Solution 2:

check out urxvt. One of the main reasons I moved to it was the great way it handles tabs.

Add this to your .Xdefaults

 URxvt.perl-ext-common:  default,tabbed,matcher

Solution 3:

It is possibe through GTK CSS config file. Create the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css then you'll able to add some CSS selector and it's attributes. There are some good examples: Remove ugly fat bazel from gnome-terminal with multiple-tabs