So, you want me to belive, the default gnome-terminal in ubuntu doesn’t look that good. Here it is:

I aggree. Fortunately, there is a way to make it look more slick.

Remove window borders

To remove window borders, install (if not yet installed) and launch ccsm.

1 $ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
2 $ ccsm &

In ccsm, open the window decorations settings window and set Decoration windows: preference to:

(any) & !(class=Gnome-terminal)

This will remove window decorations (e.g: window borders) from all gnome-terminal windows. Here is how it looks now:

Adjust colors

Finally change the color theme and add a bit of transparency. Create a new gnome-terminal profile (edit / Profiles...) and tailor it to your needs. Find a sample setting below:

Such a nice terminal deserves a colored promt. Edit your ~/.bashrc file, locate the colored PS1 definition and change it to something more cool:

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

Final version:

By the end of all this tweaks, you might change that ugly default wallpaper as well.