4 ms·

Why is MinTTY better than putty? Putty is terrific -- why would you want to put that in a clunky cygwin terminal?

by gizmo 17y ago

rbanffy 17y ago
Putty is an excelent terminal, but that's it. For everything else, you are stuck with either a Windows command prompt (which is atrocious) and to have your civilized environment on other machine (usually not reachable when you are, say, on a plane). The clunky Cygwin terminal (a bash running inside a Windows text window) is a thing of the past. I urge you to try either MinTTY (which is part of Cygwin) or Poderosa (mentioned in a comment to TFA) as shell environments. Since I never used PuTTY as anything beyond a terminal, I don't know what magic it can do beyond what MinTTY does, but, since decent set of command-line environment is a requirement for me, PuTTY doesn't make life under Windows bearable.
- amalcon 17y ago
  I use coLinux to get around the networking issue. It's sometimes painful (you need to use a pretty old kernel), but it gets the job done, and it feels a little more performant to me. It's also nice because I can easily spin up a "server" if I need it for some special purpose.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    In general, the less performant the better. I can explain: Whatever I make run fast on my noteboook, will be wicked fast in the production servers.
ak2 17y ago
Mintty is actually based on PuTTY's terminal emulation and Windows frontend parts, but it's tailored specifically for Cygwin. This results in smaller size and a simpler UI. It also improves on PuTTY's terminal emulation in various ways, in order to make it more xterm-compatible. For example, it supports xterm keycodes for modifier key combinations such as Ctrl+Arrow. There are also a few additional features such as mousewheel scrolling in 'less', window transparency, and the ability to place the command line cursor with a mouse click. Mintty can be used for remote connections too, by simply running the likes of 'ssh' or 'telnet' inside it.

Why is MinTTY better than putty? Putty is terrific -- why would you want to put that in a clunky cygwin terminal?

by gizmo 17y ago

Why is MinTTY better than putty? Putty is terrific -- why would you want to put that in a clunky cygwin terminal?

Putty is an excelent terminal, but that's it. For everything else, you are stuck with either a Windows command prompt (which is atrocious) and to have your civilized environment on other machine (usually not reachable when you are, say, on a plane). The clunky Cygwin terminal (a bash running inside a Windows text window) is a thing of the past. I urge you to try either MinTTY (which is part of Cygwin) or Poderosa (mentioned in a comment to TFA) as shell environments. Since I never used PuTTY as anything beyond a terminal, I don't know what magic it can do beyond what MinTTY does, but, since decent set of command-line environment is a requirement for me, PuTTY doesn't make life under Windows bearable.

amalcon 17y ago
I use coLinux to get around the networking issue. It's sometimes painful (you need to use a pretty old kernel), but it gets the job done, and it feels a little more performant to me. It's also nice because I can easily spin up a "server" if I need it for some special purpose.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  In general, the less performant the better. I can explain: Whatever I make run fast on my noteboook, will be wicked fast in the production servers.

ak2 17y ago

Mintty is actually based on PuTTY's terminal emulation and Windows frontend parts, but it's tailored specifically for Cygwin. This results in smaller size and a simpler UI. It also improves on PuTTY's terminal emulation in various ways, in order to make it more xterm-compatible. For example, it supports xterm keycodes for modifier key combinations such as Ctrl+Arrow. There are also a few additional features such as mousewheel scrolling in 'less', window transparency, and the ability to place the command line cursor with a mouse click. Mintty can be used for remote connections too, by simply running the likes of 'ssh' or 'telnet' inside it.