I’ve been working with terminator for years and one of the best things you can do is personalize your own layout with custom commands in each window.

Be careful, terminator version 1.90 won’t render layouts properly. I’m using terminator 1.91

In my default configuration I have three windows, each one executes different commands:

  • df -h ; bash
  • cd /home/mortiz/projects/; ls -ltr ; bash
  • ip addr; bash

As well each of them have their own colors and opacity settings.

But why «;bash» at the end of each command? Because if you don’t, the window will be closed immediately after the first command is executed.

Every  time I open terminator it look like this:

This is the default configuration file (/home/mortiz/.config/terminator/config) as reference:

[global_config]
[keybindings]
[layouts]
  [[default]]
    [[[child0]]]
      fullscreen = False
      last_active_term = 146857a5-e6d2-49e6-aa8b-41099ef93446
      last_active_window = True
      maximised = True
      order = 0
      parent = ""
      position = 0:28
      size = 1360, 669
      title = mortiz@florida: ~
      type = Window
    [[[child1]]]
      order = 0
      parent = child0
      position = 678
      ratio = 0.50036900369
      type = HPaned
    [[[child3]]]
      order = 1
      parent = child1
      position = 334
      ratio = 0.503012048193
      type = VPaned
    [[[terminal2]]]
      command = ""
      order = 0
      parent = child1
      profile = default
      type = Terminal
      uuid = 5b799711-1de2-41e9-bb77-a4552372b1d4
    [[[terminal4]]]
      order = 0
      parent = child3
      profile = red
      type = Terminal
      uuid = 146857a5-e6d2-49e6-aa8b-41099ef93446
    [[[terminal5]]]
      order = 1
      parent = child3
      profile = inferior
      type = Terminal
      uuid = 1701a49e-5e87-4539-bea7-1c87db6b99a5
[plugins]
[profiles]
  [[default]]
    background_darkness = 0.9
    background_type = transparent
    cursor_color = "#aaaaaa"
    custom_command = df -h;bash
    foreground_color = "#ffffff"
    scrollback_infinite = True
    use_custom_command = True
  [[inferior]]
    background_color = "#33001a"
    background_darkness = 0.9
    background_type = transparent
    cursor_color = "#aaaaaa"
    custom_command = ip addr;bash
    foreground_color = "#ffffff"
    scrollback_infinite = True
    use_custom_command = True
  [[red]]
    background_color = "#4d1a00"
    background_darkness = 0.9
    background_type = transparent
    cursor_color = "#aaaaaa"
    custom_command = cd /home/mortiz/Documents/projects;ls -ltr;bash
    use_custom_command = True

If you want to design your own layout different sizes of windows or colors you can do it by setting the preferences as described in this document.

Be careful, in version 1.91 I wasn’t able to setup custom commands in Preferences > Layouts > terminal > Custom Commands Instead try with Preferences > Profiles > Custom Command as showed in the image below