How can I disable the VS Code editor and only show its integrated terminal?

Question

I am currently building a lab environment for colleagues. I'm using code-server for that purpose. However, they don't need to use the code editor area, only the Terminal window is enough for learning. How do I configure the settings.json workspace or any configuration anywhere to not show the editor area of files and only show the plane Terminal only. On startup, I just need the Terminal and nothing else. This is important to avoid distractions or any unneeded use of file creation or editing

I tried the below configuration not working:

{
    "editor.wordWrap": "off",
    "editor.minimap.enabled": false,
    "workbench.startupEditor": "none",
    "workbench.colorTheme": "Default Dark+",
    "workbench.activityBar.visible": false,
    "workbench.statusBar.visible": false,
    "workbench.sideBar.location": "left",
    "terminal.integrated.defaultLocation": "view",
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "bash",
}

Answer 1

You can get close by putting "workbench.panel.opensMaximized": "always" in settings.json. As for making a particular panel open on startup, I'm not sure how to do that. VS Code remembers the state of the workbench and will restore that state on reopening, so as long as you open the Terminal Panel once manually and then leave it open when you close it, it will open the Terminal Panel again automatically when you open it the next time.

I don't think there's a way to completely disable the editor.

You might be interested in this feature request: Extract the integrated terminal #34442. You can give the issue ticket a thumbs up reaction to show support for it and subscribe to it to get notified about discussion and progress. But please avoid making noisy comments like "+1" / "bump".

You're probably not interested in this, but others might: There's a feature-request to add a setting to disable terminal restoration: Missing option for disabling terminal restoration #39137

Loosely related: You'll probably also want to modify the values of the terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.* settings.