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When I have to work on a Windows machine the first thing I install is git: https://git-scm.com/downloads https://git-scm.com/downloads It comes with bash and a

When I have to work on a Windows machine the first thing I install is git: https://git-scm.com/downloads https://git-scm.com/downloads It comes with bash and all the standard tools (including ssh IIRC), so I can work on a real command line. Especially as a vi user, I'm right at home. I find this a lot easier to manage than Cygwin: a lighter install, no packages to select, and smoother integration.

tonteldoos 9y ago
Have you looked at Mobaxterm at all? I have the same issues, and accidentally discovered this a few years ago, and haven't looked back. Lightweight Cygwin install, own package manager, EXTREMELY usable. The free version is plenty good, but even the paid for version is 'only' $80.
- stefanpie 9y ago
  I second this recommendation. It’s a really great tool; I really like the combined SSH and FTP integration so I can browse and edit files with my favorite text editor on the machine I’m ssh’ed into really efficiently while also running commands at the same time.
- surge 9y ago
  Also love MobaXterm I wish Cygwin performed better on Windows, git operations on Linux take minutes on Windows because it has to spin up the whole cygwin environment. This kind of still makes me want to use Linux, but MobaXTerm makes my Windows desktop very usable for administration.
- itgoon 9y ago
  Another "me too!" for MobaXterm. Sessions in tabs, easy file transfer, built-in and automatic X forwarding. I like PuTTY, and have used it a lot, but MobaXterm has been great.
putinontheritz 9y ago
The problem with gitbash is its way slower. Plus, the real reason you get Putty or SecureCRT if you’re lucky, is because they are actually terminal emulators and not a DOS shell. Sorry I don’t find Mona compelling at all.
- H1Supreme 9y ago
  Yeah, but doesn't Putty force you to use it's goofball ssh keys? With git bash you can use regular ssh keys. And, you can generate them the way you're used to (assuming you already use Linux). Idk, I think git bash works just fine in most cases.
  - JoBrad 9y ago
    It does. But it also comes with a utility that will generate keys, and/or convert regular SSH keys to the format Putty uses.
- woodrowbarlow 9y ago
  you can install the tools into your global path so that you can use git's openssh from powershell.
- danesparza 9y ago
  Wow. Way slower? Git bash is just as fast for me. And MUCH more convenient.
erikb 9y ago
or just install msys2. Works just as well imo, and can more easily integrate other packages as well.
- philamonster 9y ago
  Yes! OOTB package mgmt...
- w4yai 9y ago
  MSYS2 is highly underated, it works perfectly and I cannot work without it now.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    So it's basically a much-improved MinGW or binutils package, is that the idea?
    - RayDonnelly 9y ago
      No it's a completely open source, built from source (using gcc) software distribution for Windows. It uses pacman to install packages and comes with many hundreds of prebuilt ones.
- irishcoffee 9y ago
  It felt like x-mas when I discovered msys. The package management blew my mind. Getting a qt kit set up took about 1 minute. Great wiki about set up and use here: https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki
  - dangerbird2 9y ago
    Msys uses Arch Linux's package manager of all things
    - erikb 9y ago
      Yeah it's not such a mind-blower if you are experienced in using Linux, where this is just common, but it's still really nice to not miss this when working on Windows. However in the current version of MSYS2 (after an update a few months ago) they suddenly seem to mix the different linux-like distributions and for me it's really hard to choose which shell to use and which package to install for that shell.
b1gtuna 9y ago
Neat. I wasn't aware Git client had this much feature. On Windows 10 I have "Bash on Windows", but on older systems (such as Windows 7), Git client would do the trick. MobaXterm is nice, but I don't like how heavy it is...
- mey 9y ago
  WSL has exited beta on the mainline release. You can now install Ubuntu/Suse from the windows store. Look up the processes to extract data from your current wall, unintall the legacy edition and get the new addition. It's not clear yet how the legacy version will be impacted it may be easier to migrate sooner rather than later
- flafla2 9y ago
  You should try WSL with cmder [1], a lightweight windows terminal that feels great and is heavily customizable. It’s the iTerm2 of Windows IMO. [1] http://cmder.net/ http://cmder.net/
  - gotenyama 9y ago
    +1 for CMDER, I recommend also following this guide [1] to easily launch linux subsystem for windows on cmder. [1] https://gingter.org/2016/11/16/running-windows-10-ubuntu-bash-in-cmder/ https://gingter.org/2016/11/16/running-windows-10-ubuntu-bas...
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    Isn't it just ConEmu[1] bundled with some other utility? [1] https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/
tootie 9y ago
Git Bash is based on msys/mingw which have been around a while. I think both mingw and cygwin will both be deprecated in favor Windows Subsystem for Linux.
- srcmap 9y ago
  I have bash scripts within cygwin that control Windows firewall via netsh interface. I still can't run those command under Windows Subsystem for Linux.
  - tootie 9y ago
    Wouldn't that be much easier to do with PowerShell? I haven't ever attempted, but I'm assuming...
    - srcmap 9y ago
      I use mac, windows, linux, embedded linux all the time. bash/python are just native languages for me. The powershell's syntax is just too esoteric for me. I did tried that a few times.
- tavert 9y ago
  Highly unlikely. You'd only deprecate them if they serve the exact same purpose, but they don't. Many users will switch, but not those who want a posix runtime environment for a win32 executable that can run on machines that don't have WSL installed (cygwin, and the fork msys2 which git-bash is based on); or to use the gcc compilers to target win32 executables that use the windows native (non-posix) runtime - mingw. Do you know that you can use gcc to build windows executables and dlls from Linux, Mac, or WSL? That's mingw and it's not going away.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
These days you go to the Microsoft App store and download Ubuntu. It loads up actual bash and comes with everything you'd expect. (ssh being just one of the things). The terminal emulation is improving (there are still a couple of glitches) but pretty much all of my daily tools work exactly correctly.
- gkya 9y ago
  Is there any advantages over using Ubuntu itself directly?
  - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
    The big advantage is that it runs within Windows, so you can use your Windows and Linux tools at the same time. It's also not done as a virtual machine, so the Ubuntu running on Windows can access and manipulate files on your Windows system very easily.
    - Skotic 9y ago
      Albeit very slowly. Unless they fixed it recently, writing to a vast amount of files is very slow compared to native Linux. Anyone who has cloned a large repository I'm sure is aware of this.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        I felt like file speed sped up quite a bit in the Fall Creators Update, though of course that notion is entirely anecdotal. Also, the native Windows git is still your best bet for git operations. That's one of the cases where I will have a PowerShell and an Ubuntu bash window side-by-side, working in the same /mnt/d/... | D:\... directory. git operations in PowerShell and Jekyll (or whatever) operations in Ubuntu bash.
        efreak 9y ago
        Does it make a difference if you run your git operations through cmd from the bash command line? If so, is there a simple way to automatically get the current windows path from pwd? If it's the same speed as native git running in a separate window (I think it should be), it might be worth coming up with some kind of script to do this automatically. Not sure how to get that working with using Linux tools within git, though (editing commit messages, diffing, etc). Also, how does file speed within the Linux environment (/home/username) compare to that outside (/mnt/C/whatever)? Also, they _really_ chose a poor name for that executable; it should have been wsl.exe or some such, not bash.exe. At least lxss.exe isn't already in use by other software in my path...
styfle 9y ago
This is what I do too. I used to use Cygwin but it became a pain to manage the packages and it couldn't update it's own setup.exe last I checked. I recently tried out WSL and I still run into problems with the file system. My home directory is in a new place which is kind of annoying. And cloning a repo with Git changed all the line endings. autocrlf didn't do anything for me either. Back to good ol' git.exe
mcintyre1994 9y ago
I really miss ‘git bash here’ from File Explorer when I’m on my macbook. Why it doesn’t have open terminal here/open iterm here I don’t know. I used to have an AppleScript thing to do it for iterm 2 but it got broke and now all I can find is a button in the finder window.. but it really should be built in.
- kccqzy 9y ago
  Instead of ranting, perhaps post your broken AppleScript so we can help you fix that. It really ought to be < 10 lines of AppleScript.
- Angostura 9y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do, but if you leave the terminal icon in your Dock, dragging any folder from Finder onto it will launch terminal in that directory. Any good?
  - mcintyre1994 9y ago
    Nice, works with iTerm2 too - thanks :) I have an iTerm button in Finder which opens it in the current folder, so it's okay - but Windows has right click > open powershell here, and if you have git bash then it has right click > open git bash here - which feels more natural to me. I think the Linux desktops I've used all had right click > shell too.

tonteldoos 9y ago

Have you looked at Mobaxterm at all? I have the same issues, and accidentally discovered this a few years ago, and haven't looked back. Lightweight Cygwin install, own package manager, EXTREMELY usable. The free version is plenty good, but even the paid for version is 'only' $80.

stefanpie 9y ago
I second this recommendation. It’s a really great tool; I really like the combined SSH and FTP integration so I can browse and edit files with my favorite text editor on the machine I’m ssh’ed into really efficiently while also running commands at the same time.
surge 9y ago
Also love MobaXterm I wish Cygwin performed better on Windows, git operations on Linux take minutes on Windows because it has to spin up the whole cygwin environment. This kind of still makes me want to use Linux, but MobaXTerm makes my Windows desktop very usable for administration.
itgoon 9y ago
Another "me too!" for MobaXterm. Sessions in tabs, easy file transfer, built-in and automatic X forwarding. I like PuTTY, and have used it a lot, but MobaXterm has been great.

putinontheritz 9y ago

The problem with gitbash is its way slower. Plus, the real reason you get Putty or SecureCRT if you’re lucky, is because they are actually terminal emulators and not a DOS shell. Sorry I don’t find Mona compelling at all.

H1Supreme 9y ago
Yeah, but doesn't Putty force you to use it's goofball ssh keys? With git bash you can use regular ssh keys. And, you can generate them the way you're used to (assuming you already use Linux). Idk, I think git bash works just fine in most cases.
- JoBrad 9y ago
  It does. But it also comes with a utility that will generate keys, and/or convert regular SSH keys to the format Putty uses.
woodrowbarlow 9y ago
you can install the tools into your global path so that you can use git's openssh from powershell.
danesparza 9y ago
Wow. Way slower? Git bash is just as fast for me. And MUCH more convenient.

erikb 9y ago

or just install msys2. Works just as well imo, and can more easily integrate other packages as well.

philamonster 9y ago
Yes! OOTB package mgmt...
w4yai 9y ago
MSYS2 is highly underated, it works perfectly and I cannot work without it now.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  So it's basically a much-improved MinGW or binutils package, is that the idea?
  - RayDonnelly 9y ago
    No it's a completely open source, built from source (using gcc) software distribution for Windows. It uses pacman to install packages and comes with many hundreds of prebuilt ones.
irishcoffee 9y ago
It felt like x-mas when I discovered msys. The package management blew my mind. Getting a qt kit set up took about 1 minute. Great wiki about set up and use here: https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki
- dangerbird2 9y ago
  Msys uses Arch Linux's package manager of all things
  - erikb 9y ago
    Yeah it's not such a mind-blower if you are experienced in using Linux, where this is just common, but it's still really nice to not miss this when working on Windows. However in the current version of MSYS2 (after an update a few months ago) they suddenly seem to mix the different linux-like distributions and for me it's really hard to choose which shell to use and which package to install for that shell.

b1gtuna 9y ago

Neat. I wasn't aware Git client had this much feature. On Windows 10 I have "Bash on Windows", but on older systems (such as Windows 7), Git client would do the trick. MobaXterm is nice, but I don't like how heavy it is...

mey 9y ago
WSL has exited beta on the mainline release. You can now install Ubuntu/Suse from the windows store. Look up the processes to extract data from your current wall, unintall the legacy edition and get the new addition. It's not clear yet how the legacy version will be impacted it may be easier to migrate sooner rather than later
flafla2 9y ago
You should try WSL with cmder [1], a lightweight windows terminal that feels great and is heavily customizable. It’s the iTerm2 of Windows IMO. [1] http://cmder.net/ http://cmder.net/
- gotenyama 9y ago
  +1 for CMDER, I recommend also following this guide [1] to easily launch linux subsystem for windows on cmder. [1] https://gingter.org/2016/11/16/running-windows-10-ubuntu-bash-in-cmder/ https://gingter.org/2016/11/16/running-windows-10-ubuntu-bas...
- walterstucco 9y ago
  Isn't it just ConEmu[1] bundled with some other utility? [1] https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/

tootie 9y ago

Git Bash is based on msys/mingw which have been around a while. I think both mingw and cygwin will both be deprecated in favor Windows Subsystem for Linux.

srcmap 9y ago
I have bash scripts within cygwin that control Windows firewall via netsh interface. I still can't run those command under Windows Subsystem for Linux.
- tootie 9y ago
  Wouldn't that be much easier to do with PowerShell? I haven't ever attempted, but I'm assuming...
  - srcmap 9y ago
    I use mac, windows, linux, embedded linux all the time. bash/python are just native languages for me. The powershell's syntax is just too esoteric for me. I did tried that a few times.
tavert 9y ago
Highly unlikely. You'd only deprecate them if they serve the exact same purpose, but they don't. Many users will switch, but not those who want a posix runtime environment for a win32 executable that can run on machines that don't have WSL installed (cygwin, and the fork msys2 which git-bash is based on); or to use the gcc compilers to target win32 executables that use the windows native (non-posix) runtime - mingw. Do you know that you can use gcc to build windows executables and dlls from Linux, Mac, or WSL? That's mingw and it's not going away.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

These days you go to the Microsoft App store and download Ubuntu. It loads up actual bash and comes with everything you'd expect. (ssh being just one of the things). The terminal emulation is improving (there are still a couple of glitches) but pretty much all of my daily tools work exactly correctly.

gkya 9y ago
Is there any advantages over using Ubuntu itself directly?
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  The big advantage is that it runs within Windows, so you can use your Windows and Linux tools at the same time. It's also not done as a virtual machine, so the Ubuntu running on Windows can access and manipulate files on your Windows system very easily.
  - Skotic 9y ago
    Albeit very slowly. Unless they fixed it recently, writing to a vast amount of files is very slow compared to native Linux. Anyone who has cloned a large repository I'm sure is aware of this.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      I felt like file speed sped up quite a bit in the Fall Creators Update, though of course that notion is entirely anecdotal. Also, the native Windows git is still your best bet for git operations. That's one of the cases where I will have a PowerShell and an Ubuntu bash window side-by-side, working in the same /mnt/d/... | D:\... directory. git operations in PowerShell and Jekyll (or whatever) operations in Ubuntu bash.
      - efreak 9y ago
        Does it make a difference if you run your git operations through cmd from the bash command line? If so, is there a simple way to automatically get the current windows path from pwd? If it's the same speed as native git running in a separate window (I think it should be), it might be worth coming up with some kind of script to do this automatically. Not sure how to get that working with using Linux tools within git, though (editing commit messages, diffing, etc). Also, how does file speed within the Linux environment (/home/username) compare to that outside (/mnt/C/whatever)? Also, they _really_ chose a poor name for that executable; it should have been wsl.exe or some such, not bash.exe. At least lxss.exe isn't already in use by other software in my path...

styfle 9y ago

This is what I do too. I used to use Cygwin but it became a pain to manage the packages and it couldn't update it's own setup.exe last I checked. I recently tried out WSL and I still run into problems with the file system. My home directory is in a new place which is kind of annoying. And cloning a repo with Git changed all the line endings. autocrlf didn't do anything for me either. Back to good ol' git.exe

mcintyre1994 9y ago

I really miss ‘git bash here’ from File Explorer when I’m on my macbook. Why it doesn’t have open terminal here/open iterm here I don’t know. I used to have an AppleScript thing to do it for iterm 2 but it got broke and now all I can find is a button in the finder window.. but it really should be built in.

kccqzy 9y ago
Instead of ranting, perhaps post your broken AppleScript so we can help you fix that. It really ought to be < 10 lines of AppleScript.
Angostura 9y ago
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do, but if you leave the terminal icon in your Dock, dragging any folder from Finder onto it will launch terminal in that directory. Any good?
- mcintyre1994 9y ago
  Nice, works with iTerm2 too - thanks :) I have an iTerm button in Finder which opens it in the current folder, so it's okay - but Windows has right click > open powershell here, and if you have git bash then it has right click > open git bash here - which feels more natural to me. I think the Linux desktops I've used all had right click > shell too.