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My version of Ubuntu 14.10 has no GNOME or other terminal so I am unable to use a command line to input commands.This has prevented me from upgrading to 15.04. 14.10 was installed commercially on my Acer AMD E1 in place of Windows 8

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  • The Software Centre? Synaptic? Are any of those installed? Easiest way is to CTRL + ALT + F1 and log in through the terminal. Then install what you wish from there. Of course "GNOME" is not a terminal...
    – Ken Sharp
    Jan 26, 2016 at 6:05
  • 14.10 has reached end of life (EOL) and is no longer supported including upgrade to 15.04 (which will reach EOL on Feb 4 too). Let me suggest you "upgrade" to 15.10. from booting an. installtation CD/USB. This should leave your data in your HOME untouched but still it is better to make a backup first.
    – Takkat
    Jan 26, 2016 at 12:31

3 Answers 3

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By default, standard Ubuntu with Unity Desktop comes with the terminal emulators gnome-terminal and the more basic xterm.

Normally the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T should bring up one, usually the gnome-terminal.
You can also search in the Dash's application lens for terminal emulators:

Dash search screenshot
No idea why it shows the Sudoku there... :D


In case you (or anybody else) had uninstalled both of them for whatever reason, you can still always open a "real" terminal by accessing one of the TTYs ("TeleTYpewriters") 1-6.

You get there by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F x, with x in range 1-6, e.g. F1, and will see a login mask like the one below:

Ubuntu 14.10 COMPUTERNAME tty1
COMPUTERNAME login: [ENTER YOUR USERNAME HERE]
Password: [ENTER YOUR PASSWORD HERE]

Enter your user name (not the display name! If your display name is John Smith, the user name is probably johnsmith), then enter your password. Note that the password gets not echoed while you type it, not even with asterisks.

After the login, you have a terminal. To install the two default terminal emulators again, run the following command (assuming you are an admin user with sudo privileges):

sudo apt-get install gnome-terminal xterm

You will be prompted for your password again, then the installation should start.

After it finished, you can log out of the shell session using the command exit or the shortcut Ctrl+D.

Once you're logged out, leave the TTY1 (or 2-6) and go back to TTY7, where the GUI desktop is. You get there by simply pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7.

Now you should be able to enjoy a working terminal emulator again!

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  • Many thanks Byte Commander - I followed your steps re TTY and I now have a terminal. Some stuff was eliminated in the process and my system now reports that it is fully updated. I suspect the terminal was lost in the 14.10 installation to replace WIN7.
    – T.Muir
    Jan 28, 2016 at 10:09
  • @T.Muir Instead of adding "Thank you" comments, please accept the answer by clicking on the grey tick symbol on the left of it. This will mark your question as solved and show future readers which answer helped you most. Also make sure you have visited our small tour page where you can learn the most important facts about how our site works. And I'm happy that I could help you. But please remove one of the two comments above, we don't want them twice. ;-)
    – Byte Commander
    Jan 28, 2016 at 10:13
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Perhaps the easiest way to test whether a Terminal application has been installed on your system (and it would be unusual if this was not the case) is to use the following keyboard command: Ctrl+Alt+ T.

Reference:

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If your Ubuntu 14.10 desktop is installed by default settings, then the desktop environment is most likely to be Unity instead of GNOME.

In Ubuntu Unity, command line tools like Terminal and XTerm are pre-installed. You can open a terminal window easily by Ctrl + Alt + T. @andrew.46

Or you can click the Ubuntu logo on the upper left desktop, then type terminal.

Click upper left desktop

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