I was commenting on Guake in http://pierrelucbacon.com/2008/09/19/3-useful-applications/ but found that it was slightly buggy and polluting the tray in the top panel under gnome with its icon.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Tilda which turned out to be at least equally, and so far, much more usable and interesting to use than Guake. My point behind this is that I loved the fact that the GUI is kept just as clean as I like it: a black border-less window.

Currently on my system, Tilda is launched at startup (System->Preferences->Startup Applications) and is invoked with SUPER-A on the keyboard.

It’s good to have an unobtrusive terminal at the tip of our fingers anytime you need it.

Here is a little screencast to give you  a sense of how it can interact on your desktop: