Hide terminal running program?

[Chao06]

It really bothers me that when I start a program through the terminal it takes up space with the terminal that's tied up with the program, and the program itself. I know how to keep it from tying up the terminal, but when it devotes the terminal, I like that it gives output if the program crashes. Is there a way I can set a terminal to completely hide itself (off the desktop and the taskbar) while it's running a program, then reappear once the program is closed?

Thanks,
David

[Digitaltux]

Ok I am still new at this as well but I have found that if I run gksu cmmand here, instead of sudo it doesnt tie up the terminal. But I find that if I make a launcher icon to the panel leave it as app instead of run in terminal and put sudo nautilus it will ask for password but not tie up the terminal. I hope this is right and what you are looking for. If it is not right well hey I tried and am still learning.

[D-cat]

In terminal mode, programs have two text output types that generally both get sent to the console, the Standard output (STDOUT) and the Error output (STDERR). This is done for the reason you're explaining as well as the ability to pipe standard outputs to other programs and still keeping the errors separate; I don't think I can make it work exactly the way you want... but I might be able to come close.

If you execute a program with an & following the name, it'll return to you the prompt, but it'll still show you the outputs.

If you execute a program with a simple redirector, the standard output will be redirected but not the errors, therefore something like progname > /dev/null will eliminate standard output and still show only the errors. Don't want the errors either?, then send those to a log file that you can read after with the parameter &2, which stands for STDERR...

progname & > /dev/null &2 > progerror.log

should accomplish something close to what you are looking for. You will not get a popup when your program is done, but you can look at the log with something like less progerror.log

[zba78]

You could move the terminal window to a desktop that way it would be out of sight.

Another option is to use a program called alltray which allows you to minimise any open window to the system tray. Last time I ran alltray it wouldn’t work in Ubuntu but perhaps it’ll work for you

[Chao06]

mm, it looks like that's Close to what I want to do... a bit cumbersome to do regularly, but if I'm trying to fix something I can always just look up this thread and launch it the way you said...
thanks!