Woohoo, I did it! Had to frankenstein together 2 or 3 different websearched sets of instructions but here we go, it's working.
Also shout out to @ssokolow for recommending a pull-down terminal emulator; tapping a hotkey is much more convenient!
@arteteco @hrisskar At the moment, I'm using something I hacked together using rxvt-unicode, a customized version of its kuake plugin, and GNU screen for tabs but, when I use something polished and ready-made, I use Yakuake.
(Partly because I'm a KDE user and partly because, when I last evaluated the options ages ago, it felt most polished.)
@arteteco Just started using Tilda today.
@ssokolow