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by tlynchpin 2458 days ago
"Install a decent terminal emulator" - this is the big problem for any command line experience on windows. What do you suggest?
4 comments

What are you missing? Windows Console has undergone a complete overhaul in the last few years. With QuickEdit, copy and paste via keyboard, and reflow during window resizing, the Windows Console is pretty nice.

Also this might be helpful for anyone wanting to follow along: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/

Has anyone tried the new official terminal? [0]/[1]

It looks rather interesting, if still in prerelease. (also, there's a trailer for it on YouTube - so weird [2])

0: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-terminal-preview/9...

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE

I use Windows Terminal about 10 hours a day. Windows Terminal has got tabs, Unix cut and Paste, emoji support (surprisingly how common outputting emoji is in tests suites etc).

The 0.5 version is usable as a day to day terminal.

Alternative most stable Terminal is Fluent which I've used for a couple of years now.

I have small reviews of about 8 of the Windows terminal apps at: https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile

Hyper works pretty damn well. I was using ConEMU, but it is very slow on WSL2.

Fwiw, I work on rails + react apps with this setup: - Hyper as my terminal - WSL2. Then just my zsh/vim/tmux setup - Docker's tech preview for WSL2

This has been pretty reliable so far. I'm sure I'll hit a snag at some point, but it has been a relatively smooth experience.

I'm currently using wsltty, which is mintty for wsl. It's decent, but it's terrible on fast scrolling texts (i.e. `docker logs` for a container without a maximum log size configured)

Alacritty is great if you need actual performance.

Hyper is actually the one with the overall best experience, but it is electron and the usual issues apply.

Fwiw, mobaxterm can also be configured to use wsl.

Is Cmder/ConEmu good? I use it and kinda expected it to be listed.
My list wasn't supposed to be exhaustive in any way. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.

There are quite a few terminal emulators on windows and I just listed a few I thought noteable.

I didn't even mention the new one from Microsoft!

If you just want a sleek looking terminal for a few commands, cmder is definitely a valid choice. The occasionally broken copy paste is however dangerous, as it can remove characters from the middle of a line

I.e. `rm -rf /tmp/something && echo success` can get shortened to `rm -rf / && echo success`. It's admittedly very unlikely, as it usually just introduces errors such as `rm -rf /tm & echo success`.

The new one from Microsoft is getting there, is just needs an "Terminal here" on right click ;)

Also yes I noticed those issues in Cmder, I'm always looking for better choices that look nice to the eyes.

ConEmu works but honestly every time I look into Windows terminals I keep looking for another option, there's just so many issues with ConEmu.
Any good ones? I use Cmder (ConEmu based) a lot, but I do notice the issues from time to time.