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Checkout cygwin [1]. I think the main problem with a good terminal on Windows is that terminals depend heavily on having programs to run on them, and Windows, b

Checkout cygwin [1]. I think the main problem with a good terminal on Windows is that terminals depend heavily on having programs to run on them, and Windows, because of its lack of good terminal, doesn't have the programs to run with it. From what I have heard, PowerShell looks promising. [1]http://www.cygwin.com/ http://www.cygwin.com/

ansible 13y ago
I had previously seen glitches using the cygwin terminal with VIM. Using GNU screen with cygwin has been done though.
laumars 13y ago
Powershell (and cygwin as well IIRC) still have lousy terminal emulators. The issue isn't the lack of good programs nor the shell, it's the Windows GUI "wrapper" around the CLI shell. In Windows neither cmd.exe nor Powershell allow you to alter the width of the terminal in real time. Nor have sane copy/paste options, region highlighting and so on. There's no tabbed grouping, clickable URLs, etc. Sure, some of the aforementioned can be tweaking in the preferences. But on the whole, the Windows terminal emulators are pretty poor when compared to (for example) Konsole. Cygwin is pretty awful as well. I hear a lot of people suggest it but I really couldn't get on with Cygwin. I found MinGW to be a much better solution (which also ships some pretty cool terminal emulators as well)
- sspiff 13y ago
  I've used Cygwin (with mintty and bash), and it's not terrible. Not as nice as on other platforms, but definitely better than the other things I've seen on Windows. Before mintty, I used Putty and connected to a local SSH server. Putty is pretty nice too.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Yeah I like PuTTY. Have you tried MinGW? It's a fork of Cygwin and (in my opinion at least) fixes a lot of problems with Cygwin's install process.
- selectiveshift 13y ago
  In regards to powershell, check out PowerGUI for a better experience.
- shadowfox 13y ago
  ConEmu (my personal preference) or Console 2 will improve your experience a bit. Both are pretty flexible tools. Clink (https://code.google.com/p/clink/ https://code.google.com/p/clink/) is also something I have found useful.
- rlvesco7 13y ago
  If you have cygwin, you can install gnome-terminal. I use it daily and it is awesome. Way better than console2 or any other windows based emulator I've tried. You may need to install it using Cygwin Ports though.
  - laumars 13y ago
    To be honest, I wiped windows and installed Linux in the end. Since I was trying to make windows behave like Linux, it made more sense just to run Linux.
- graylights 13y ago
  Have you tried setting Quick-Edit for your command line? The right-click copy/paste works well enough (though not nearly as good as a linux terminal). But the highlighting is still garbage.
lnanek2 13y ago
I always have Cygwin around on my Windows installs. I highly recommend changing the terminal for it to RXVT, though, which works a lot better than the various things they've had by default the past few years. It's just takes a minute or two of tweaking things to setup - usually I don't even edit the main start script anymore since I always launch from the folder context menu setup by the chere program in Cygwin.

ansible 13y ago

I had previously seen glitches using the cygwin terminal with VIM. Using GNU screen with cygwin has been done though.

laumars 13y ago

Powershell (and cygwin as well IIRC) still have lousy terminal emulators. The issue isn't the lack of good programs nor the shell, it's the Windows GUI "wrapper" around the CLI shell. In Windows neither cmd.exe nor Powershell allow you to alter the width of the terminal in real time. Nor have sane copy/paste options, region highlighting and so on. There's no tabbed grouping, clickable URLs, etc. Sure, some of the aforementioned can be tweaking in the preferences. But on the whole, the Windows terminal emulators are pretty poor when compared to (for example) Konsole. Cygwin is pretty awful as well. I hear a lot of people suggest it but I really couldn't get on with Cygwin. I found MinGW to be a much better solution (which also ships some pretty cool terminal emulators as well)

sspiff 13y ago
I've used Cygwin (with mintty and bash), and it's not terrible. Not as nice as on other platforms, but definitely better than the other things I've seen on Windows. Before mintty, I used Putty and connected to a local SSH server. Putty is pretty nice too.
- laumars 13y ago
  Yeah I like PuTTY. Have you tried MinGW? It's a fork of Cygwin and (in my opinion at least) fixes a lot of problems with Cygwin's install process.
selectiveshift 13y ago
In regards to powershell, check out PowerGUI for a better experience.
shadowfox 13y ago
ConEmu (my personal preference) or Console 2 will improve your experience a bit. Both are pretty flexible tools. Clink (https://code.google.com/p/clink/ https://code.google.com/p/clink/) is also something I have found useful.
rlvesco7 13y ago
If you have cygwin, you can install gnome-terminal. I use it daily and it is awesome. Way better than console2 or any other windows based emulator I've tried. You may need to install it using Cygwin Ports though.
- laumars 13y ago
  To be honest, I wiped windows and installed Linux in the end. Since I was trying to make windows behave like Linux, it made more sense just to run Linux.
graylights 13y ago
Have you tried setting Quick-Edit for your command line? The right-click copy/paste works well enough (though not nearly as good as a linux terminal). But the highlighting is still garbage.

lnanek2 13y ago

I always have Cygwin around on my Windows installs. I highly recommend changing the terminal for it to RXVT, though, which works a lot better than the various things they've had by default the past few years. It's just takes a minute or two of tweaking things to setup - usually I don't even edit the main start script anymore since I always launch from the folder context menu setup by the chere program in Cygwin.