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Yes, you really do need to source a setup.bash file in every single terminal that you want to use ROS in. These scripts control many important ROS environment variables and non-ROS environment variables (PYTHONPATH, CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, etc.). The setup.bash scripts provide a convenient way to control which version of ROS is "active" and which workspaces are "active" (see page on overlaying workspaces).

If you want every terminal to automatically "source" a particular setup.bash script, you could put that command in your ~/.bashrc. See the Environment Setup section of the ROS installation instructions.