When comparing Guake vs Tilix, the Slant community recommends Guake for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?” Guake is ranked 11th while Tilix is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Guake is:
You can hit F12 (by default, though it's customizable) to open a terminal overlay, Quake-style, as a drop-down from the top of the screen.
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Pros
Pro Drop-down terminal
You can hit F12 (by default, though it's customizable) to open a terminal overlay, Quake-style, as a drop-down from the top of the screen.
Pro Supports transparency
Transparency is particularly useful for when you need to refer to the information displayed by application under Guake window.
Pro Hotkey support
Guake is very fast and easy to open with a customizable hotkey, meaning there's no fiddling with menus or icons.
Pro Extremely customizable
Guake's appearance is very customizable: from the transparency to the width and height of the window. You can also choose which key to use for toggling the terminal window.
Pro Available in many popular distro repositories
Guake is available in a lot of repositories for the most popular distros. This makes it very easy to obtain and install on almost any system.
Pro Shortcut key F12 can be used to toggle
The global shortcut key, F12, can be used to easily toggle the terminal window.
Pro Tabs support
Guake supports tabs, while working with them is very easy.
Pro Can choose byobu as shell
You can choose byobu as shell, by adding a line to /etc/shells : " /usr/bin/byobu"
and get guake with byobu ... sweet!
Pro Multiple sessions inside a single window
In addition to tiling, Tilix supports placing separate sessions in tabs or switching from one to another through a sidebar.
Pro Tiling makes for ease of use
The user can split terminals horizontally or vertically, according to their needs or preferences.
Pro Integrates nicely into GNOME 3
Tilix follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines and uses the UI patterns of this desktop environment.
Pro Good alternative to Terminator
Tiling and ability to type into multiple terminals simultaneously is Terminator's 2 most significant features. Tilix has them as well.
Pro Configurable shortcuts
Many actions in Tilix can be triggered with configurable shortcuts.
Pro GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
Tilix follows GNOME HIG whereas gnome-terminal doesn't. GNOME should use Tilix as their default terminal.
Pro Transparent background
Unlike the standard GNOME Terminal, Tilix supports configurable background transparency.
Pro Fancy looks
Tilix has that new GNOME look, with a HeaderBar. It can also be disabled.
Pro Able to write into multiple terminals simultaneously
Inside a session, you can select multiple terminals, which will receive the same input simultaneously.
Pro Can be used as a drop-down terminal
The new 1.30 version of Tilix supports a quake mode enabling it to work as a drop-down terminal.
Pro Extremely fast
As fast as gnome-terminal, if not faster.
Pro Copy on select
Pro Faster than Gnome Terminal
When running commands it feels snappier.
Pro Easy
Pro Copy as HTML
You can copy text from the terminal as HTML for embedding in web settings.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Solarized themes built-in
Great support for solarized color schemes, and no setup is involved.
Pro Terminus can notify you about finished tasks and perform actions based on terminal output
Cons
Con Not cross-platform
Linux only, and additionally targeting GTK3.
Con Not very responsive
Occasionally, Guake slows down and is not very responsive.
Con No font ligature
Guake uses vte for its terminal emulation, and vte simply doesn't support font ligature (yes, it's 2019). This is what its maintainer thinks about it.
He really thinks supporting font ligature breaks terminal's grid, like he doesn't understand a font that's monospace is a monospace no matter if it has ligature or not.
Con Unmaintained
Bugs and pull requests are not processed.
Con No font ligatures
Con Takes a bit more memory than Gnome terminal
Would've expected this to be more lightweight.
Con Heavyweight
Tilix has quite a lot of dependencies and takes ~100MB of RAM when running.