[aquanext]

I have had the same complaints for a while. I switched to Mac OS X around 2004 because it was just massively better in terms of quality of life for the user. The OS has continued to improve while Windows has been epically stagnant. Even with major pushes to modernize things, it still feels like it's been bolted together with duct tape and bailing wire. It's just horrible.

It seems like virtually any linux distribution you can pick at random with a dart and it would have overall better quality of life on things like a basic terminal app. Microsoft has even tried to improve their terminal a few times and it still totally feels terrible. If I didn't have to use windows for a few work things, I would never go near it again. And in future jobs, me using it at all for work is definitely off the table.

[NotTheDr01ds]

I am truly curious what terminal app in Linux you feel is better than Windows Terminal at this point. While the terminal experience in Windows languished for many years, Windows Terminal has quickly evolved to be one of the (if not the) best there is on any platform.

But I certainly could be missing out on a great Linux terminal. If there's one that is better than Windows Terminal, I could switch to it under WSL/WSLg on Windows 11.

Bonus: Windows Terminal's release notes occasionally include some fun nuggets like:

> You spoke up about the scroll bars being WAY TOO THIN, so we chonked them up

> Our confidence in the settings UI's Save button has led to us no longer backing up the settings JSON file. We won't be deleting the 61,000 backups we did leave on your hard drive, but what's a couple thousand kilobytes between friends?

> The breadcrumbs have been picked up and will no longer navigate you to strange cottages

> No longer will dropdown menus and combo boxes fly wildly off the screen if you scroll or drag the window! Rejoice!

:-)

[kappattack]

I use Konsole. Yakuake for quick access. Yakuake just runs Konsole in a drop-down application made with Qt. I like Qt and KDE a lot, so I'm probably biased in that sense.

Ive been using tmux with these two for years. It's everything I need and more. Ive never tried windows terminal, i usually only boot up the windows PC for gaming, and honestly once EAC and Proton work together I won't even need to do that anymore. I'll have to check out windows terminal next time im on that PC though, thanks for sharing. Always curious to hear what others are using.

[marlowe221]

Oh man, Windows Terminal is a wonderful thing! I've used Konsole extensively; I've been a filthy dual booter for many years now.

But I never did much development on Windows until a particular job I had about a year ago. It was a Windows shop and we did everything between WSL2, VSCode, and Windows Terminal. It was actually... a really nice developer experience. I was very pleasantly surprised by how well things worked. WSL2 isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the newer WSLg on Windows 11 solves some of those problems.

If I could have the Windows Terminal in a Linux desktop distro, I would take it in a heartbeat. I think you're in for a treat if you give it a try!

From a slightly broader view, Windows + WSL2/WSLg + Windows Terminal is a pretty great experience that manages to combine a lot of the best of both Windows and Linux worlds, IMHO.

[everybodyknows]

Been considering a switch from Gnome to Kubuntu (coincident with an uplevel to 20.04) based on trust in reports here on HN that recent KDE is much improved. Would you second that praise?

[kappattack]

Yeah I'd say give it a shot and see if you like it. I hopped for years until I landed on Kubuntu and I've never had the urge to leave, it just feels right for me. I still play with VMs sometimes to explore, but Kubuntu has been my home since 18.04 was released. If you're looking to switch to the next LTS, might as well wait a few weeks for 22.04. If you're not sure mess around with a Kubuntu VM until 22.04 is available, then you can make a choice based on that experience.

KDE connect is also very cool, if you give it a shot definitely check it out. I really enjoy the customization plasmashell offers, and it's all integrated very well. You can also set window behaviors to keep on top and remember scale / position, which i use when debugging GUI applications so I can click around my IDE without having to shuffle windows. There's just a ton of great functionality to explore.

[everybodyknows]

Seems 22.04 may be where Ubuntu at last does make Firefox installable by Snap only.

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2473114

[kappattack]

Gross. I very much dislike snap. Thanks for sharing though, i will probably just have to postpone the jump to 22.04 a bit longer. Im doing fine on 20.04 without any snap packages.

Very disappointing news.

[eadmund]

> I am truly curious what terminal app in Linux you feel is better than Windows Terminal at this point.

I like suckless terminal. It emulates a terminal in X11. It adds copy/paste and a few other conveniences. It does nothing else. There is no scroll bar, there is no configuration, there are no menus and no combo boxes. It's just a terminal emulator, and it works.

[jart]

Kitty is the most superior Linux terminal. Ones like gnome-terminal are outstanding too, but not that much better than the stuff you'll find on Windows, e.g. PuTTY. The way I judge them is this: can the terminal render 60fps mpeg videos as ansi without delay using printvideo.com?

[antiframe]

Last I used Windows was Windows 7 and the terminal was serviceable but not as useful as kitty. It wasn't as fast for sure. I also don't think it used a text-based configurtion file I could edit and check into my configs repo.

[dflock]

I would say kitty is still better than Windows Terminal - although the gap is narrowing, for my use cases.

[spartanatreyu]

> I switched to Mac OS X around 2004 because it was just massively better in terms of quality of life for the user.

I find it really hard to take these comments seriously with the incredibly obvious flaws you run into in the first few minutes of basic operation using MacOS.

In MacOS:

- Clicking the maximize button (the green circle) for any application won't maximize the app consistently. Sometimes an app will grow slightly, sometimes it will only grow vertically, sometimes an app will shrink slightly, sometimes an app will maximize and sometimes an app will go full screen hiding the top window bar.

- There are no keyboard shortcuts for moving or resizing windows around.

- If you have an app/file selected in Finder (MacOS' Explorer), pressing Enter will rename the file. To open the file you must instead press Cmd + Down.

These are basic operations. These are the kind of issues you'd expect from a hobby homegrown OS, not a serious product.

[rafram]

> Clicking the maximize button (the green circle) for any application won't maximize the app consistently.

Option-click on the maximize button consistently maximizes.

> If you have an app/file selected in Finder (MacOS' Explorer), pressing Enter will rename the file. To open the file you must instead press Cmd + Down.

Or Cmd-O. But Enter is the standard rename shortcut on macOS. It might not be your preference but that doesn't mean it's wrong. (I find it intuitive - I have no idea what the rename shortcut is on Windows because it's not so easily discoverable.)

[spartanatreyu]

This is... disheartening.

You would think that the easiest shortcuts should be granted operations based on how often they are likely to be used.

If I want to maximize a window in Windows:

- If hands on keyboard and mouse: Click Maximize.

- If hand on mouse: Click Maximize.

- If hands on keyboard: Windows + Up.

If I want to maximize a window on MacOS:

- If hands on keyboard and mouse: Option-Click on Maximize.

- If hand on mouse: Move one hand to keyboard, Option-Click on Maximize.

- If hands on keyboard: Move one hand to mouse, Option-Click on Maximize.

That's a lot of ceremony for moving a window.

Yes, I understand that they're not as bad as they used to be.

(I remember when they forced users to hold down a button on their keyboard before they could right click, and when they prevented users from resizing their windows on anything but the bottom right corner of the window.)

But tweaking the shortcuts would be a pretty small change in return for a large quality of life increase for users.

I mean how often do people want to rename a file/app instead of opening it. (renaming multiple files aside, since you're probably going to batch rename anyway)

> I have no idea what the rename shortcut is on Windows

In Windows: F1 for Help, F2 for Rename, F3 for Search. You'll generally see their function written on more workstation keyboard key caps.

[brimble]

I guess it's got something to do with repeat rates or animations or something, but Windows' cmd prompt (or just DOS itself) has always felt better to type in, to me, than any other terminal I've ever used.

I don't like it otherwise, but that part's nice for some reason.