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.

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.