12 ms·

Babun – A new Windows shell

180 points by blearyeyed 12y ago

viraptor 12y ago
I was actually expecting a new GUI shell for the recent windows versions. I used to run bb4win in the w2k times, but it doesn't look like win 7/8 have any popular alternative shells available. Does anyone know of those?
- DaemonHN 12y ago
  I was also expecting a new GUI shell and used to run GeoShell and Litestep. I got somewhat excited and hoped that there might be a resurgence in the popularity of Windows shells but it seems like that time is gone for good now. If I recall correctly, the Windows XP release managed to stabilize the Explorer shell quite a bit (compared to Win9x) which in turn decreased the demand for a lightweight, stable and customizable replacements.
  - math0ne 12y ago
    I believe lightstep is also working on windows 8 now.
- qwerta 12y ago
  There is nothing wrong with current shell. Who needs window resize or copy&paste anyway?
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Now, now, be fair. alt-space > e > p becomes pure muscle memory. It's actually a really elegant key combination that I definitely did not have to look up 10 times before it stuck because no other program uses it. And of course powershell, which doesn't Get-Have-The-Most-Over-Verbose-And-Stupid-Naming-Conventions-Ever and have a terrible language design that results in [console]::writeline("Powershell {0} being a complete farce", "not") solves a lot of these problems.
    - ygra 12y ago
      Just to be fair: 1. Clink [−7½] and PSReadLine [𝜋] both enable you to press Ctrl+V. On Unix-likes you're told to use a better terminal emulator to handle such cases nicely (something like ytcxbcixvt or what's hot these days) and most people don't think twice about heeding that advice, yet on Windows people willingly suffer, grumbling and complaining? 2. gal and Tab help a lot. And I actually prefer commands like Import-Csv over things like almf in readability (at least they weren't formed by bashing your head on the keyboard). But that might just be me. 3. 'PowerShell {0} being a complete farce' -f 'not'. In the scripts I've written I could probably count the number of [Console]::WriteLine calls on one hand (unary). [−7½] http://mridgers.github.io/clink/ http://mridgers.github.io/clink/ [𝜋] https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine
    - stuaxo 12y ago
      Surely just turn on "QuickEdit mode" and paste by clicking the mouse.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    You can resize a cmd shell in the properties, and as someone posted in a sister thread, turn on Quickedit to smooth out copy and paste. Turning on tab completion requires some fiddling though (and I have no idea if it survives in newer version of Windows).
    - mattmanser 12y ago
      Seriously, have you tried these "solutions"? It's like rubbing salt into the wound.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Sure. But I don't have a lot of Unix/Linux background, so I don't really know what I'm missing. (I anyway wouldn't try to defend them as solutions, just clarifications of what is possible)
- qwerta 12y ago
  There is nothing wrong with current shell. Who needs window resize or copy&paste anyway?
- math0ne 12y ago
  Blackbox is working on windows 8. If you head over to deviant art you can find some shots of working setups on the Blackbox group: http://blackboxdesktop.deviantart.com/ http://blackboxdesktop.deviantart.com/
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    That's a very fragmented community, there seems to be zipfiles of random builds of dubious origin flying everywhere. Where's the "upstream" source?
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    LiteStep seems to be active with development much easier to follow than BlackBox - https://github.com/lsdev/LiteStep https://github.com/lsdev/LiteStep
    - 616c 12y ago
      I ran a whole lab of Litestep customized for a library once. I loved it. Later on, when I got into Linux, I fell in love again with the more exotic WM's largely because of my experience with Litestep. I have to admin Winboxen all day, so I should try it out with Windows 7. I have not used it in ages. What is said is, last time I had this inclination, they lost part of their CVS/SVN history (after a recent upgrade) in part due to lapsing hosting or something. I think I begged for a copy of the repo for nostalgia and got it from a newer dev. Long live Litestep! Try to have a student hack into a Windows kiosk running Litestep, and boy oh boy will they (and so did I) find it difficult to get into system tools on the spot!
  - pyrocat 12y ago
    Is there a centralized site for blackbox? I had trouble finding resources when installing on windows 7.
- dbbolton 12y ago
  KDE, but it's still fledgling on Windows: http://windows.kde.org/ http://windows.kde.org/
- vadskye 12y ago
  I've been using ConEmu [0] for over a year now, and it's miles better than the default console. I actually spend a majority of my time in Windows in the console now. [0] http://sourceforge.net/projects/conemu/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/conemu/
- orf 12y ago
  Power shell?
  - ygra 12y ago
    They meant a replacement for Explorer as the GUI shell. Don't confuse the following things: 1. Command-line shell (cmd, PowerShell, bash, whatnot) 2. GUI shell / desktop environment (Explorer, Gnome, KDE) 3. Console host / terminal emulator (conhost, console2, conemu, xterm, ...) Invariable all of those are referred to as »shell«, sometimes even by people who ought to know better. The linked site makes the same mistake. It's not a new shell for Windows, it's just zsh bundled with cygwin.
Artemis2 12y ago
A more mainstream alternative is cmder: https://bliker.github.io/cmder/ https://bliker.github.io/cmder/
- ihnorton 12y ago
  That looks like mostly a skin for conemu, no? I've desperately wanted to like conemu, but every time I use it something ends up broken in weird ways (hung tabs, garbled output).
  - bmj 12y ago
    I agree. I really want to like it, but moving through history with the arrow keys can often crash that tab.
  - RobinBlk7 12y ago
    Have you reported your problems? Thought no...
jmspring 12y ago
Lost me at "based on Cygwin". Yes Cygwin brings some unix goodness, but it has enough warts that I avoid it.
- MetaCosm 12y ago
  Yep. Give me something built on msys anyday.
- jhasse 12y ago
  Can you give some examples?
  - ihnorton 12y ago
    http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda (not really Cygwin's "fault" per se, but it is what it is)
  - gareim 12y ago
    I almost got a 0 on a programming project for an intro to CS class because it compiled and ran perfectly fine on Windows, but segfaulted on Linux.
    - mattdeboard 12y ago
      Which is much less a Cygwin problem than a poor understanding of the tools problem.
      - gareim 12y ago
        How is it not a cygwin (well, technically gcc for cygwin) problem? The port of gcc was bad, that's all there is to it. When I found a bug where a certain version of clang on ARM wouldn't compile a program everything else was compiling, was it a problem with my understanding or was it a bug with clang? cygwin's ports aren't going to be 100% perfect, not sure why you would claim that if there's a problem with it, it's MY misunderstanding that's the problem.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ihnorton 12y ago
Another ^nix -> Windows package system is the pacman port available in msys2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ msys2 has an impressive package list [1] and is almost [2] an amazing solution for mixed-platform projects. [1] https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages) [2] The one caveat is that it is still susceptible to the Cygwin BLODA problem whereby under certain conditions and software combinations, Windows becomes dangerously unstable after too many calls to fork.
- bitwize 12y ago
  And this is why I can't hate Microsoft. They've vastly improved over the past 20 years! Why, I remember when Windows became dangerously unstable when you did not properly release a GDI resource or passed the wrong things into RegisterClass...
  - jhasse 12y ago
    What has Microsoft to do with MSYS2?
    - paulfurtado 12y ago
      I think he was referring to this bit: > Windows becomes dangerously unstable after too many calls to fork.
malkia 12y ago
I tend to install absolutely the whole cygwin (32-bit and 64-bit in two different folders). Always use the stable, and install the debug, since it's easier this way. It's quite big (~20 gb each install - but that includes all debug symbols). I'm using all the time Far Commander calling cygwin commands. Some of the commands are not "callable" since I'm not running Far Commander through bash.exe/sh.exe (it's possible but a bit unstable). For such cases when the cygwin command does not have .exe/.com/.bat extension I run it "sh -c cmd blah", or create shortcuts for most used commands: gitk.cmd (somewhere in my PATH) @start /B ash -c "DISPLAY=:0 exec /usr/bin/wish /usr/bin/%~n0 %*" I also have this in the Startup folder: startxwin - 1>nul 2>nul Tig is also awesome for git browsing.
felipesabino 12y ago
"on top of Cygwin"... So does it mean still no copy&paste?
- runjake 12y ago
  Copy and paste work here.
  - sundvor 12y ago
    Yes! Select the ctrl+shift+letter option in Keys, and you'll even have ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v working. That, and the console window auto adjusts to resized window makes for a great start for me. Not to mention the ctrl+scrollwheel or plus/minus for changing the font size. Kudos to the devs.
- liveoneggs 12y ago
  install rxvt
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  http://www.howtogeek.com/68511/how-to-improve-your-cygwin-experience-with-mintty/ http://www.howtogeek.com/68511/how-to-improve-your-cygwin-ex...
agorabinary 12y ago
I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?
- runjake 12y ago
  1. Because they prefer Windows. 2. Because their company has standardized on Windows desktops and/or hardware. 3. Because some people might actually believe and have good evidence that Windows is a more "developer friendly" operating system for their needs.
  - fishtoaster 12y ago
    1 and 2 are perfectly legit reasons to use Windows. 3, though seems weird. If you're installing something like Babun to make your windows machine act more like a nix machine, it seems reasonable to assume that a nix box would be better for your development needs, and that you have some other reason for using windows (like #1 or #2).
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Well, if you're developing for Windows, or developing for the web and need to test Internet Explorer, or if you're either doing UI design or dealing with other people's UI designs and need access to Photoshop or Illustrator, or if you're using Visual Studio at least some of the time, or if you're working with a MySQL database and want to use something like SQLyog... there's lots of tools on Windows that can be useful for developers, and someone can very reasonably conclude that Windows (through something like this) offers better access to nix tools than nix offers to Windows tools via Wine.
    - tiedemann 12y ago
      There are those of us who actually enjoy Windows and prefer using Vagrant with zsh when doing Linux devevlopment. OS X just doesn't cut it when it comes to keyboard shortcuts and window management... Linux is nice but lacking in stuff not related to development.
owenversteeg 12y ago
I find it kind of funny how the first thing I wanted to see about this shell was screenshots. That said, it does feature syntax highlighting so that's not entirely ridiculous.
liveoneggs 12y ago
The first thing to install with cygwin is rxvt, which runs native (not in X)
- TTPrograms 12y ago
  Also Console2.
- kasabali 12y ago
  I thought rxvt doesn't support Unicode?
midnitewarrior 12y ago
No PowerShell integration makes this useless to me unfortunately.
- gcb0 12y ago
  Everyone who would be satisfied by Cygwin is already using cygwin. so this will not help them. and people using CMD must use CMD for some reason, and even though that crowd would be please by just being able to maximize their windows, this does not offer any improvement for those people. sadly, i'm in the second group.
  - jamesbritt 12y ago
    Have you looked at Console2?
    - gcb0 12y ago
      thanks!
brandonhsiao 12y ago
While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the package manager is buggy. If Babun really works, I think it will matter a lot.
- doorhammer 12y ago
  I'm a self-taught programmer. I've basically been using linux 99% of the time for the past five years, and just have a partition that runs windows if I need it. Funnily enough, the first real programming gig I landed is a full time job doing full stack .NET development, so now it's sort of flipped around. I do miss the command line. I'll have to check this out. I've been looking for a good windows shell replacement.
  - hetman 12y ago
    The other thing worth looking at is the MinGW project. It's pretty easy to get started with the mingw-get package manager (there's an installer you can find here: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started). Once you have mintty running as your terminal emulator, and a decent shell like bash, life gets a whole lot easier. The upside is that it's fully native without Cygwin's compatibility layer. The downside is that it won't have as many ported utilities (and probably not as easy to get started with as something like Babun).
    - voltagex_ 12y ago
      http://code.google.com/p/mintty/ http://code.google.com/p/mintty/ seems like it still uses cygwin1.dll (or whatever it's called these days). Am I missing something?
      - jeremyjh 12y ago
gosukiwi 12y ago
I've been using Cmder(http://bliker.github.io/cmder/ http://bliker.github.io/cmder/) for quite some time when I'm on Windows, normally I just develop on Vagrant or Nitrous using Nitrous Desktop, so when I develop I'm always using an UNIX terminal, Cmder allowed me to do so on Windows, it depends on Console2 and it's quite nice, but oh-my-zsh is actually way more awesome, if this works nicely I'll consider switching. Babun seems to be much more serious than Cmder though, the fact that you can update it using 'babun update' and you can create plugins and such makes it so much potent.
- sc00ty 12y ago
  Just a note: Cmder uses ConEmu, not Console2 :)
ilaksh 12y ago
Can this completely replace git-bash? Does it have ssh and ssh-keygen?
pantalaimon 12y ago
I wish something as nicely preconfigured as this was available on Linux
chintan39 12y ago
Great Work. Brings windows more closer to linux
hiphopyo 12y ago
So apart from the package manager, Babun is basically for people too lazy to install Cygwin, copy over their dotfiles and set a custom font?
reddit_clone 12y ago
>Would you like to use a linux-like console on a Windows host without a lot of fuzz? s/fuzz/fuss ?
levosmetalo 12y ago
Stopped reading after cygwin was mentioned.
username42 12y ago
VirtualBox with a shared directory is also a way to have all the niceties of unix without installing MinGW or Cygwin.
- ygra 12y ago
  Unless you actually have to work on that shared directory, at which point the abysmal performance results it in being nigh-useless.
- yangyang 12y ago
  You can't invoke binaries on the host that way, though.
- nikatwork 12y ago
  Unless your asshole infra team configure the SOE to actively bork vbox installs because everything is a "security risk". (But are still running EOL WinXP).
brokenparser 12y ago
From the video: > There's also a rich syntax highlighting > invokes vim Durrrrr
creepr 12y ago
I immediately recognized the `pact` tool to be a clone of `apt-cyg`. Did a search on the repo source to confirm (https://github.com/babun/babun/blob/45484c55a3b017248329ddd5eb6bfbfa437821d3/babun-core/plugins/pact/src/pact#L52 https://github.com/babun/babun/blob/45484c55a3b017248329ddd5...). It seems as if the author of Babun is trying to pass off apt-cyg as his own creation.
- meandthebean 12y ago
  Going down the list of Babun features, it doesn't look like much more than repackaged cygwin. I thought pact was the biggest innovation, but as a clone of an existing project it seems misleading to call this "a new Windows shell." It isn't without value, as others have said cygwin could be made more usable out-of-the-box, but a little more credit should be given where credit is due.
- relaytheurgency 12y ago
  I also noticed this. I immediately thought ot myself, "How is this any different than my current set up with Cygwin and apt-cyg?" Surprise: It's not!
maikklein 12y ago
I love you. I was thinking how awesome it would be to use tmux on my windows machine so I tried pact install tmux and it worked. Thank you so much, that's pretty awesome.
a_bonobo 12y ago
This looks great, but still has one no-go bug: Spaces in directory names don't work. https://github.com/babun/babun/issues/74 https://github.com/babun/babun/issues/74 and it looks like they don't really want to fix it: >We need an install.bat fix to stop the installation in such cases. The problem is, especially on older Windows machines there are always spaces in directories - XP and 2000 have 'Documents and Settings' in their %USERPROFILE%, so installation will always fail on these (?!?), others will have problems with having a space in their user-name. This seems to stem from Cygwin.

180 points by blearyeyed 12y ago

I was actually expecting a new GUI shell for the recent windows versions. I used to run bb4win in the w2k times, but it doesn't look like win 7/8 have any popular alternative shells available. Does anyone know of those?

DaemonHN 12y ago
I was also expecting a new GUI shell and used to run GeoShell and Litestep. I got somewhat excited and hoped that there might be a resurgence in the popularity of Windows shells but it seems like that time is gone for good now. If I recall correctly, the Windows XP release managed to stabilize the Explorer shell quite a bit (compared to Win9x) which in turn decreased the demand for a lightweight, stable and customizable replacements.
- math0ne 12y ago
  I believe lightstep is also working on windows 8 now.
qwerta 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with current shell. Who needs window resize or copy&paste anyway?
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Now, now, be fair. alt-space > e > p becomes pure muscle memory. It's actually a really elegant key combination that I definitely did not have to look up 10 times before it stuck because no other program uses it. And of course powershell, which doesn't Get-Have-The-Most-Over-Verbose-And-Stupid-Naming-Conventions-Ever and have a terrible language design that results in [console]::writeline("Powershell {0} being a complete farce", "not") solves a lot of these problems.
  - ygra 12y ago
    Just to be fair: 1. Clink [−7½] and PSReadLine [𝜋] both enable you to press Ctrl+V. On Unix-likes you're told to use a better terminal emulator to handle such cases nicely (something like ytcxbcixvt or what's hot these days) and most people don't think twice about heeding that advice, yet on Windows people willingly suffer, grumbling and complaining? 2. gal and Tab help a lot. And I actually prefer commands like Import-Csv over things like almf in readability (at least they weren't formed by bashing your head on the keyboard). But that might just be me. 3. 'PowerShell {0} being a complete farce' -f 'not'. In the scripts I've written I could probably count the number of [Console]::WriteLine calls on one hand (unary). [−7½] http://mridgers.github.io/clink/ http://mridgers.github.io/clink/ [𝜋] https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine
  - stuaxo 12y ago
    Surely just turn on "QuickEdit mode" and paste by clicking the mouse.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  You can resize a cmd shell in the properties, and as someone posted in a sister thread, turn on Quickedit to smooth out copy and paste. Turning on tab completion requires some fiddling though (and I have no idea if it survives in newer version of Windows).
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Seriously, have you tried these "solutions"? It's like rubbing salt into the wound.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Sure. But I don't have a lot of Unix/Linux background, so I don't really know what I'm missing. (I anyway wouldn't try to defend them as solutions, just clarifications of what is possible)
qwerta 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with current shell. Who needs window resize or copy&paste anyway?
math0ne 12y ago
Blackbox is working on windows 8. If you head over to deviant art you can find some shots of working setups on the Blackbox group: http://blackboxdesktop.deviantart.com/ http://blackboxdesktop.deviantart.com/
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  That's a very fragmented community, there seems to be zipfiles of random builds of dubious origin flying everywhere. Where's the "upstream" source?
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  LiteStep seems to be active with development much easier to follow than BlackBox - https://github.com/lsdev/LiteStep https://github.com/lsdev/LiteStep
  - 616c 12y ago
    I ran a whole lab of Litestep customized for a library once. I loved it. Later on, when I got into Linux, I fell in love again with the more exotic WM's largely because of my experience with Litestep. I have to admin Winboxen all day, so I should try it out with Windows 7. I have not used it in ages. What is said is, last time I had this inclination, they lost part of their CVS/SVN history (after a recent upgrade) in part due to lapsing hosting or something. I think I begged for a copy of the repo for nostalgia and got it from a newer dev. Long live Litestep! Try to have a student hack into a Windows kiosk running Litestep, and boy oh boy will they (and so did I) find it difficult to get into system tools on the spot!
- pyrocat 12y ago
  Is there a centralized site for blackbox? I had trouble finding resources when installing on windows 7.
dbbolton 12y ago
KDE, but it's still fledgling on Windows: http://windows.kde.org/ http://windows.kde.org/
vadskye 12y ago
I've been using ConEmu [0] for over a year now, and it's miles better than the default console. I actually spend a majority of my time in Windows in the console now. [0] http://sourceforge.net/projects/conemu/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/conemu/
orf 12y ago
Power shell?
- ygra 12y ago
  They meant a replacement for Explorer as the GUI shell. Don't confuse the following things: 1. Command-line shell (cmd, PowerShell, bash, whatnot) 2. GUI shell / desktop environment (Explorer, Gnome, KDE) 3. Console host / terminal emulator (conhost, console2, conemu, xterm, ...) Invariable all of those are referred to as »shell«, sometimes even by people who ought to know better. The linked site makes the same mistake. It's not a new shell for Windows, it's just zsh bundled with cygwin.

Artemis2 12y ago

A more mainstream alternative is cmder: https://bliker.github.io/cmder/ https://bliker.github.io/cmder/

ihnorton 12y ago
That looks like mostly a skin for conemu, no? I've desperately wanted to like conemu, but every time I use it something ends up broken in weird ways (hung tabs, garbled output).
- bmj 12y ago
  I agree. I really want to like it, but moving through history with the arrow keys can often crash that tab.
- RobinBlk7 12y ago
  Have you reported your problems? Thought no...

jmspring 12y ago

Lost me at "based on Cygwin". Yes Cygwin brings some unix goodness, but it has enough warts that I avoid it.

MetaCosm 12y ago
Yep. Give me something built on msys anyday.
jhasse 12y ago
Can you give some examples?
- ihnorton 12y ago
  http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.bloda (not really Cygwin's "fault" per se, but it is what it is)
- gareim 12y ago
  I almost got a 0 on a programming project for an intro to CS class because it compiled and ran perfectly fine on Windows, but segfaulted on Linux.
  - mattdeboard 12y ago
    Which is much less a Cygwin problem than a poor understanding of the tools problem.
    - gareim 12y ago
      How is it not a cygwin (well, technically gcc for cygwin) problem? The port of gcc was bad, that's all there is to it. When I found a bug where a certain version of clang on ARM wouldn't compile a program everything else was compiling, was it a problem with my understanding or was it a bug with clang? cygwin's ports aren't going to be 100% perfect, not sure why you would claim that if there's a problem with it, it's MY misunderstanding that's the problem.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ihnorton 12y ago

Another ^nix -> Windows package system is the pacman port available in msys2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ msys2 has an impressive package list [1] and is almost [2] an amazing solution for mixed-platform projects. [1] https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages) [2] The one caveat is that it is still susceptible to the Cygwin BLODA problem whereby under certain conditions and software combinations, Windows becomes dangerously unstable after too many calls to fork.

bitwize 12y ago
And this is why I can't hate Microsoft. They've vastly improved over the past 20 years! Why, I remember when Windows became dangerously unstable when you did not properly release a GDI resource or passed the wrong things into RegisterClass...
- jhasse 12y ago
  What has Microsoft to do with MSYS2?
  - paulfurtado 12y ago
    I think he was referring to this bit: > Windows becomes dangerously unstable after too many calls to fork.

malkia 12y ago

I tend to install absolutely the whole cygwin (32-bit and 64-bit in two different folders). Always use the stable, and install the debug, since it's easier this way. It's quite big (~20 gb each install - but that includes all debug symbols). I'm using all the time Far Commander calling cygwin commands. Some of the commands are not "callable" since I'm not running Far Commander through bash.exe/sh.exe (it's possible but a bit unstable). For such cases when the cygwin command does not have .exe/.com/.bat extension I run it "sh -c cmd blah", or create shortcuts for most used commands: gitk.cmd (somewhere in my PATH) @start /B ash -c "DISPLAY=:0 exec /usr/bin/wish /usr/bin/%~n0 %*" I also have this in the Startup folder: startxwin - 1>nul 2>nul Tig is also awesome for git browsing.

felipesabino 12y ago

"on top of Cygwin"... So does it mean still no copy&paste?

runjake 12y ago
Copy and paste work here.
- sundvor 12y ago
  Yes! Select the ctrl+shift+letter option in Keys, and you'll even have ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v working. That, and the console window auto adjusts to resized window makes for a great start for me. Not to mention the ctrl+scrollwheel or plus/minus for changing the font size. Kudos to the devs.
liveoneggs 12y ago
install rxvt
hiphopyo 12y ago
http://www.howtogeek.com/68511/how-to-improve-your-cygwin-experience-with-mintty/ http://www.howtogeek.com/68511/how-to-improve-your-cygwin-ex...

agorabinary 12y ago

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

runjake 12y ago
1. Because they prefer Windows. 2. Because their company has standardized on Windows desktops and/or hardware. 3. Because some people might actually believe and have good evidence that Windows is a more "developer friendly" operating system for their needs.
- fishtoaster 12y ago
  1 and 2 are perfectly legit reasons to use Windows. 3, though seems weird. If you're installing something like Babun to make your windows machine act more like a nix machine, it seems reasonable to assume that a nix box would be better for your development needs, and that you have some other reason for using windows (like #1 or #2).
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Well, if you're developing for Windows, or developing for the web and need to test Internet Explorer, or if you're either doing UI design or dealing with other people's UI designs and need access to Photoshop or Illustrator, or if you're using Visual Studio at least some of the time, or if you're working with a MySQL database and want to use something like SQLyog... there's lots of tools on Windows that can be useful for developers, and someone can very reasonably conclude that Windows (through something like this) offers better access to nix tools than nix offers to Windows tools via Wine.
  - tiedemann 12y ago
    There are those of us who actually enjoy Windows and prefer using Vagrant with zsh when doing Linux devevlopment. OS X just doesn't cut it when it comes to keyboard shortcuts and window management... Linux is nice but lacking in stuff not related to development.

owenversteeg 12y ago

I find it kind of funny how the first thing I wanted to see about this shell was screenshots. That said, it does feature syntax highlighting so that's not entirely ridiculous.

liveoneggs 12y ago

The first thing to install with cygwin is rxvt, which runs native (not in X)

TTPrograms 12y ago
Also Console2.
kasabali 12y ago
I thought rxvt doesn't support Unicode?

midnitewarrior 12y ago

No PowerShell integration makes this useless to me unfortunately.

gcb0 12y ago
Everyone who would be satisfied by Cygwin is already using cygwin. so this will not help them. and people using CMD must use CMD for some reason, and even though that crowd would be please by just being able to maximize their windows, this does not offer any improvement for those people. sadly, i'm in the second group.
- jamesbritt 12y ago
  Have you looked at Console2?
  - gcb0 12y ago
    thanks!

brandonhsiao 12y ago

While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the package manager is buggy. If Babun really works, I think it will matter a lot.

doorhammer 12y ago
I'm a self-taught programmer. I've basically been using linux 99% of the time for the past five years, and just have a partition that runs windows if I need it. Funnily enough, the first real programming gig I landed is a full time job doing full stack .NET development, so now it's sort of flipped around. I do miss the command line. I'll have to check this out. I've been looking for a good windows shell replacement.
- hetman 12y ago
  The other thing worth looking at is the MinGW project. It's pretty easy to get started with the mingw-get package manager (there's an installer you can find here: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started). Once you have mintty running as your terminal emulator, and a decent shell like bash, life gets a whole lot easier. The upside is that it's fully native without Cygwin's compatibility layer. The downside is that it won't have as many ported utilities (and probably not as easy to get started with as something like Babun).
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    http://code.google.com/p/mintty/ http://code.google.com/p/mintty/ seems like it still uses cygwin1.dll (or whatever it's called these days). Am I missing something?
    - jeremyjh 12y ago

gosukiwi 12y ago

I've been using Cmder(http://bliker.github.io/cmder/ http://bliker.github.io/cmder/) for quite some time when I'm on Windows, normally I just develop on Vagrant or Nitrous using Nitrous Desktop, so when I develop I'm always using an UNIX terminal, Cmder allowed me to do so on Windows, it depends on Console2 and it's quite nice, but oh-my-zsh is actually way more awesome, if this works nicely I'll consider switching. Babun seems to be much more serious than Cmder though, the fact that you can update it using 'babun update' and you can create plugins and such makes it so much potent.

sc00ty 12y ago
Just a note: Cmder uses ConEmu, not Console2 :)

ilaksh 12y ago

Can this completely replace git-bash? Does it have ssh and ssh-keygen?

pantalaimon 12y ago

I wish something as nicely preconfigured as this was available on Linux

chintan39 12y ago

Great Work. Brings windows more closer to linux

hiphopyo 12y ago

So apart from the package manager, Babun is basically for people too lazy to install Cygwin, copy over their dotfiles and set a custom font?

reddit_clone 12y ago

>Would you like to use a linux-like console on a Windows host without a lot of fuzz? s/fuzz/fuss ?

levosmetalo 12y ago

Stopped reading after cygwin was mentioned.

username42 12y ago

VirtualBox with a shared directory is also a way to have all the niceties of unix without installing MinGW or Cygwin.

ygra 12y ago
Unless you actually have to work on that shared directory, at which point the abysmal performance results it in being nigh-useless.
yangyang 12y ago
You can't invoke binaries on the host that way, though.
nikatwork 12y ago
Unless your asshole infra team configure the SOE to actively bork vbox installs because everything is a "security risk". (But are still running EOL WinXP).

brokenparser 12y ago

From the video: > There's also a rich syntax highlighting > invokes vim Durrrrr

creepr 12y ago

I immediately recognized the `pact` tool to be a clone of `apt-cyg`. Did a search on the repo source to confirm (https://github.com/babun/babun/blob/45484c55a3b017248329ddd5eb6bfbfa437821d3/babun-core/plugins/pact/src/pact#L52 https://github.com/babun/babun/blob/45484c55a3b017248329ddd5...). It seems as if the author of Babun is trying to pass off apt-cyg as his own creation.

meandthebean 12y ago
Going down the list of Babun features, it doesn't look like much more than repackaged cygwin. I thought pact was the biggest innovation, but as a clone of an existing project it seems misleading to call this "a new Windows shell." It isn't without value, as others have said cygwin could be made more usable out-of-the-box, but a little more credit should be given where credit is due.
relaytheurgency 12y ago
I also noticed this. I immediately thought ot myself, "How is this any different than my current set up with Cygwin and apt-cyg?" Surprise: It's not!

maikklein 12y ago

I love you. I was thinking how awesome it would be to use tmux on my windows machine so I tried pact install tmux and it worked. Thank you so much, that's pretty awesome.

a_bonobo 12y ago

This looks great, but still has one no-go bug: Spaces in directory names don't work. https://github.com/babun/babun/issues/74 https://github.com/babun/babun/issues/74 and it looks like they don't really want to fix it: >We need an install.bat fix to stop the installation in such cases. The problem is, especially on older Windows machines there are always spaces in directories - XP and 2000 have 'Documents and Settings' in their %USERPROFILE%, so installation will always fail on these (?!?), others will have problems with having a space in their user-name. This seems to stem from Cygwin.