6 ms·

Man, a fully functional supported bash-like terminal on Windows would be heaven sent.

ConceptJunkie 13y ago
I use TCC from these guys (jpsoft.com). It used to be called 4NT and before that 4DOS. Basically it's a superset of cmd.exe (a super-dooper-set these days) and lets you do pretty much anything you can do with shells like bash. If you're from a Unix background, you're probably better off running bash from Cygwin, but if you're a Windows guy, TCC is a great shell. It's the first thing I install on a Windows machine.
ygra 13y ago
I'd take PowerShell over bash any day. If you mean the console window, that's completely independent of the applicating running inside both on Unix-likes and Windows and admittedly there are things to improve. However, there are ConEmu, Console2 and others which by now work really, really well.
- dman 13y ago
  Why are all of them column based? You cant arbitrarily resize a console window in 2014?
  - Encosia 13y ago
    I use Cmder, which is nice and you can resize arbitrarily (I agree that it's ridiculous not to be able to horizontally resize a console window).
  - AlexeyBrin 13y ago
    Sure you can! Right click on the console window bar (top) and look in Settings. You will need to increase the horizontal buffer size or something like that.
    - jasomill 13y ago
      Right, but that's a considerable inconvenience compared to the usual ways of resizing a window. Also, IIRC, there's no Win32 SIGWINCH equivalent, so full-screen interactive console utilities won't respond correctly to resizing. While there are reasonable third-party workarounds for the most pressing problems, the Windows console subsystem could use lots of love.
      - RobinBlk7 13y ago
        There is equivalent! And many applications know about it. Example? Far Manager, Vim, ... WINDOW_BUFFER_SIZE_EVENT
    - dman 13y ago
      Why can I resize all other windows by dragging the bottom right but not cmd.exe? I also forgot to mention how slow text output is on cmd.exe when compared against terminals like xterm on linux. If the new CEO can improve the windows command line experience I for one would be immensely grateful.
      - NamTaf 13y ago
        Because cmd.exe is a fixed width based on the character count. You can drag the height down but not the width sideways. If you right click on the black C:\ icon in the top left and go to properties, the layout tab will let you set the character count width and in turn change that, or alternatively set the font size which will scale the window to suit the character count at the new font size. You might have been facetious to prove a point but surprisingly few know you can change those settings there, and I like making my terminal oldschool-hacker-green :) edit: Actually, I've no idea what I've done but now I can drag the window arbitrarily and it'll just show more characters. Maybe I set a font and now can do it? I don't know! edit 2: I made it go to 160 characters, then set it back to 80, and now it'll let me drag it out to 160 but no more? This is so confusing Microsoft is on drugs edit 3: Oh, ok. Screen buffer size sets the 'you can resize to this maximum' whereas screen size sets the 'you start at this size'. I'll stop making edits now.
  - nkerkin 13y ago
    You can with ConEmu, just drag or snap to any size you want and subsequent commands will fill any available horizontal space
- Touche 13y ago
  They're not completely independent on Windows. That's why all of the attempts to make a better Windows console ultimately fail.
gretful 13y ago
I'd take bash over PowerShell any day. The whole Windows philosophy makes building stuff out of disconnected smaller parts harder than it needs to be.
- squigs25 13y ago
  Exactly - the beauty of bash is that it's accessible
- majkinetor 13y ago
  That is not PS problem but community problem. PowerShell is years ahead of bash. Bash community is decades ahead.
  - Touche 13y ago
    That's ridiculous. PowerShell's #1 selling point, object oriented streams, is only available to .NET languages! Which is why the community will never prosper.
  - Zardoz84 13y ago
    Try fish. It's year ahead of bash and powershell.
rbanffy 13y ago
It's called MinTTY and comes with Cygwin. I'd never even consider using a Windows machine without it. http://lifehacker.com/5185647/mintty-gives-cygwin-a-native-windows-interface http://lifehacker.com/5185647/mintty-gives-cygwin-a-native-w...
- coryfklein 13y ago
  Microsoft supports MinTTY and Cygwin? /sarcasm
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    It doesn't have to. That's the beauty of an open software ecosystem.
i_s 13y ago
Agree that it is needed. In the meantime, I use M-x eshell in emacs when I have to develop on windows.

I use TCC from these guys (jpsoft.com). It used to be called 4NT and before that 4DOS. Basically it's a superset of cmd.exe (a super-dooper-set these days) and lets you do pretty much anything you can do with shells like bash. If you're from a Unix background, you're probably better off running bash from Cygwin, but if you're a Windows guy, TCC is a great shell. It's the first thing I install on a Windows machine.

ygra 13y ago

I'd take PowerShell over bash any day. If you mean the console window, that's completely independent of the applicating running inside both on Unix-likes and Windows and admittedly there are things to improve. However, there are ConEmu, Console2 and others which by now work really, really well.

dman 13y ago
Why are all of them column based? You cant arbitrarily resize a console window in 2014?
- Encosia 13y ago
  I use Cmder, which is nice and you can resize arbitrarily (I agree that it's ridiculous not to be able to horizontally resize a console window).
- AlexeyBrin 13y ago
  Sure you can! Right click on the console window bar (top) and look in Settings. You will need to increase the horizontal buffer size or something like that.
  - jasomill 13y ago
    Right, but that's a considerable inconvenience compared to the usual ways of resizing a window. Also, IIRC, there's no Win32 SIGWINCH equivalent, so full-screen interactive console utilities won't respond correctly to resizing. While there are reasonable third-party workarounds for the most pressing problems, the Windows console subsystem could use lots of love.
    - RobinBlk7 13y ago
      There is equivalent! And many applications know about it. Example? Far Manager, Vim, ... WINDOW_BUFFER_SIZE_EVENT
  - dman 13y ago
    Why can I resize all other windows by dragging the bottom right but not cmd.exe? I also forgot to mention how slow text output is on cmd.exe when compared against terminals like xterm on linux. If the new CEO can improve the windows command line experience I for one would be immensely grateful.
    - NamTaf 13y ago
      Because cmd.exe is a fixed width based on the character count. You can drag the height down but not the width sideways. If you right click on the black C:\ icon in the top left and go to properties, the layout tab will let you set the character count width and in turn change that, or alternatively set the font size which will scale the window to suit the character count at the new font size. You might have been facetious to prove a point but surprisingly few know you can change those settings there, and I like making my terminal oldschool-hacker-green :) edit: Actually, I've no idea what I've done but now I can drag the window arbitrarily and it'll just show more characters. Maybe I set a font and now can do it? I don't know! edit 2: I made it go to 160 characters, then set it back to 80, and now it'll let me drag it out to 160 but no more? This is so confusing Microsoft is on drugs edit 3: Oh, ok. Screen buffer size sets the 'you can resize to this maximum' whereas screen size sets the 'you start at this size'. I'll stop making edits now.
- nkerkin 13y ago
  You can with ConEmu, just drag or snap to any size you want and subsequent commands will fill any available horizontal space
Touche 13y ago
They're not completely independent on Windows. That's why all of the attempts to make a better Windows console ultimately fail.

gretful 13y ago

I'd take bash over PowerShell any day. The whole Windows philosophy makes building stuff out of disconnected smaller parts harder than it needs to be.

squigs25 13y ago
Exactly - the beauty of bash is that it's accessible
majkinetor 13y ago
That is not PS problem but community problem. PowerShell is years ahead of bash. Bash community is decades ahead.
- Touche 13y ago
  That's ridiculous. PowerShell's #1 selling point, object oriented streams, is only available to .NET languages! Which is why the community will never prosper.
- Zardoz84 13y ago
  Try fish. It's year ahead of bash and powershell.

rbanffy 13y ago

It's called MinTTY and comes with Cygwin. I'd never even consider using a Windows machine without it. http://lifehacker.com/5185647/mintty-gives-cygwin-a-native-windows-interface http://lifehacker.com/5185647/mintty-gives-cygwin-a-native-w...

coryfklein 13y ago
Microsoft supports MinTTY and Cygwin? /sarcasm
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  It doesn't have to. That's the beauty of an open software ecosystem.

i_s 13y ago

Agree that it is needed. In the meantime, I use M-x eshell in emacs when I have to develop on windows.