GNOME Terminal is a terminal emulation  application  that  you  can  use  to  perform  the
following actions:

Access a UNIX shell in the GNOME environment.

A  shell is a program that interprets and executes the commands that you type at a command
line prompt. When you start GNOME Terminal, the application starts the default shell  that
is specified in your system account. You can switch to a different shell at any time.

Run any application that is designed to run on VT102, VT220, and xterm terminals.

GNOME  Terminal  emulates  the  xterm  program developed by the X Consortium. In turn, the
xterm program emulates the DEC VT102 terminal and  also  supports  the  DEC  VT220  escape
sequences.  An  escape  sequence  is  a  series  of  characters  that  starts with the Esc
character.

GNOME Terminal accepts all of the escape sequences that the VT102 and VT220 terminals  use
for functions such as positioning the cursor and clearing the screen.