How to display more than 1 terminal simultaneously

You need Terminator:

sudo apt-get install terminator

For four terminals at start-up, do the following:

• Start terminator
• Split the terminal Ctrl+Shift+O
• Split the upper terminal Ctrl+Shift+O
• Split the lower terminal Ctrl+Shift+O
• Open Preferences and select Layouts
• Click Add and enter a usefull layout name and Enter
• Close Preferences and Terminator

• Open Terminator with this command:

  terminator --maximise --layout=<your_layout_name>
  

  or with this command:

  terminator --maximise --borderless --layout=<your_layout_name>
  

Jump between the terminal windows with Ctrl+Tab.

You can assign your personal terminator command to Ctrl+Alt+T in Keyboard Settings > Shortcuts. (Thx @Wilf)

Of course you can also create a terminator.desktop file. Copy the original desktop file and make your changes:

cp /usr/share/applications/terminator.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
nano ~/.local/share/applications/terminator.desktop

You can start 4 Terminals with Ctrl+Alt+T and fit them to the edges of your screen with Ctrl+Alt+Numpad[1,3,7,9] or left/right with Ctrl+Alt+Numpad[4/6] or top/bottom Ctrl+Alt+Numpad[8/2] and switch with Alt+Tab to ONE Terminal and with Alt+key above Tab between the terminals if one is active.

Or

You can use tabs with Ctrl+Shift+T and switch between the terminals with Alt+Page-Up/Page-Down.

As another alternative, I would suggest using byobu.

Byobu is a GPLv3 open source text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer. It was originally designed to provide elegant enhancements to the otherwise functional, plain, practical GNU Screen, for the Ubuntu server distribution. Byobu now includes an enhanced profiles, convenient keybindings, configuration utilities, and toggle-able system status notifications for both the GNU Screen window manager and the more modern Tmux terminal multiplexer, and works on most Linux, BSD, and Mac distributions.

The advantage is that it is text-based, meaning you can use it without a graphical environment! This is very useful when dealing with servers, which often don't have a GUI.

You even have a bottom status bar with a lot of useful information, like the date/time, the load average, etc.

The shortcuts you have to know if you use Byobu are:

• F2 creates a new tab.
• Shift+F2 creates a new split tab (this splits your current tab horizontally).
• F3 and F4 to switch between tabs.
• F9 to configure Byobu.

sudo apt-get install byobu will install Byobu.

As a bonus, being a terminal multiplexer, it means you won't lose your session and your tabs if you closed the terminal by mistake. And you can run byobu in another terminal and get synchronised outputs.

There are even scripts to save the layouts if you wish to persist the session across reboots.

Personally, I use emacs with M-x ansi-term or M-x shell depending on what I am doing.

But if you are looking for just a terminal multiplexer then there is always the quietly revered tmux:

https://github.com/tmux/tmux

Edit: JoKeR pointed out that you can install tmux with apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get install tmux

Just resize your terminal windows, so they all fit a corner of the screen. The Terminal can also have tabs, which might help out. Right click the window and select New Tab.

Here's how to make windows able to resize to corners:

1. Run sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager.
2. Run sudo ccsm or search ccsm in Unity Dash.
3. Scroll down until you find Grid, under Window Management. Make sure it is enabled.
4. Go to the Corners / Edges tab and change the Corner options to their corresponding corners.

You can use tmux, a terminal multiplexer.

sudo apt-get install tmux

For four panels you can use this script 4pSession, create the script with

mkdir -p ~/bin
touch ~/bin/4pSession
chmod +x ~/bin/4pSession
nano ~/bin/4pSession

and add the code below

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# if the session is already running, just attach to it.
tmux has-session -t 4panel
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  sleep 1
  tmux attach -t 4panel
else 
  tmux new-session -d -s 4panel
  tmux split-window -v
  tmux split-window -h
  tmux select-pane -t 0
  tmux split-window -h
  tmux select-pane -t 0
  tmux -2 attach-session -d
fi

Than you can create a desktop file:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/tmux.desktop

with this content:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=tmux
Comment=a terminal multiplexer
Exec=/<path_to_script>/4pSession
Icon=terminal
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Categories=Terminal;

Move between the panes with Ctrl+B and than → or ← or ↑ or ↓

My crude contribution to this question: install wmctrl and adjust the script bellow,that opens and positions four terminal windows, to your screen. First find out the size of your screen with xwininfo -root and then adjust -e parameters (they are in this order 0,x-position,y-position,width,height). Numbers I use bellow are just example

#!/bin/bash
# Author: Serg Kolo
# Date: 2/18/2015
# Description: Open 4 terminals and position them






gnome-terminal -t WINDOW-ONE &
gnome-terminal -t WINDOW-TWO &
gnome-terminal -t WINDOW-THREE &
gnome-terminal -t WINDOW-FOUR &

sleep 0.5
wmctrl -r WINDOW-ONE -e 0,0,0,500,250 &
sleep 0.5
wmctrl -r WINDOW-TWO -e 0,0,384,500,250 &
sleep 0.5
wmctrl -r WINDOW-THREE -e 0,500,0,500,250 &
sleep 0.5
wmctrl -r WINDOW-FOUR -e 0,500,384,500,250 &

You could bind this as a shortcut, for instance to Ctrl+I or whatever. Another idea, without installing wmctrl, is to open 4 --geometry= option

I would strongly recommend tmux. It offers a whole lot of customizations and total independence from the mouse (if that is concern). You can split screens horizontally, vertically, switch between them with some keystrokes, leave sessions open and reconnect to them later, etc.

With 4 terminal windows open, and while working in one of them, I can simply switch among them with Alt+` (left tick) if want to use keyboard, or simply click on the launcher icon of the terminal to bring up all its windows and click on the chosen one.

My installation is Ubuntu 14.04, with the default (Unity 3D) desktop, and updated to-date.

I don't get it why people complicate things and install 3rd party products when the default Ubuntu installation already provides the feature.

you can use Gnu Screen for this also, and use a vertical split, and horizontal split.

you can put these in your ~/.screenrc config file. I have been able to split using most any gnu screen, with proper adjustments to .screenrc file.

Some combo of below should do you in your .screenrc.

screen -t tl 1 bash
split 
focus down
screen -t bl 3 bash
split -v
focus down
screen -t br 4 bash
select 1
split -v
focus down
screen -t tr 2 bash

I had it set for 6 screen once. heres my residual config from that

 30 ## 1 a local bash
 31 # screen -t host03 1 bash
 32 #sessinoname blamb1
 33
 34 ## 2 ssh to host04
 35 # split -v
 36 # focus
 37 # select 2
 38 # resize -6
 39 # screen -t host04 2 ssh host04
 40 # caption string "%{kk}XXXXXXX"
 41
 42 ## 3 bashed
 43 # focus
 44 # select 1
 45 # split
 46 # focus
 47 # select 3
 48 # screen -t bashed 3  bash
 49 #exec ssh host04
 50 # caption string "%{kk}XXXXXXX"
 51
 52 ## 4 bashedup
 53 # split
 54 # focus down
 55 # screen -t bashedup 4 bash
 56 # caption string "%{kk}XXXXXXX"
 57
 58 ## 5 compass
 59 # split
 60 # focus down
 61 # resize -14
 62 # screen -t compass 5 bash
 63 # leave caption commented till resize works
 64 #caption string "%{kk}XXXXXXX"
 65
 66 #focus up
 67
 68
 69 ## 5mysql
 70 # exec mysql -p
 71 # screen -t mysql 5 mysql
 72
 73 ## 6php
 74 # screen -t php.ini 6 vim /etc/php/php.ini
 75 # select php.ini
 76 # chdir /etc/php
 77 # exec vim php.ini