DEV Community

Recommended Terminal for Windows?

Jakob Attkinson on November 14, 2019

For years I've been using ConEmu for basic Git/cmd commands. It would look something like this. Quite simple, but would get the job done after spen...
Collapse
 
pantsme profile image
Antonio Savage

The new Windows Terminal is amazing. I've used Conemu and I still get the alure of it but the new Terminal is top notch. I'd give it a shot and see if you like it. My only gripe with the new terminal is that say you change your PATH env variable for Powershell only..you have to close the entire Terminal app out and then reopen before it updates. Can't just close the PS tab and reopen it.

Here's a link to my profile.json for Terminal. It's got a ridiculous amount of themes installed and some setup for the different consoles so you can see some of the layout and options. github.com/afmsavage/default-proje...

Collapse
 
attkinsonjakob profile image
Jakob Attkinson

Thanks for sharing. It's almost 4AM here, but I'll try it first thing in the morning.

I just hope I can set a keyboard shortcut to un/hide it. This is something I love about ConEmu.

Collapse
 
adriathomas profile image
Adrian Thomas • Edited

Terminus.

Used Windows terminal and it kept crashing after a while.

Ubuntu Terminal is ok. It gets the job done.

At the end Terminus won out for me.

EDIT: I don't and haven't touched Terminus in a long while.

These days I switch between Windows Terminal and Alacritty. The latter for speed. Doesn't have panes and windows, but that's what tmux is for.

Collapse
 
attkinsonjakob profile image
Jakob Attkinson

I'm afraid that being just another emulator, in the end I'll run into similar issues like with ConEmu...

Collapse
 
ahferroin7 profile image
Austin S. Hemmelgarn

Anything you use from a GUI though is a terminal emulator, no matter what they say otherwise. An actual terminal is either physical hardware (usually connected through a serial line, like the old DEC VT100 or the famous IBM 3270) or a text-based video mode on your GPU (such as the classic 80x25 VGA text mode used by DOS).

Collapse
 
vuong profile image
Vuong

My "stack": Windows Terminal + PowerShell Core + WSL
No need Git bash anymore.

Collapse
 
attkinsonjakob profile image
Jakob Attkinson

Don't you prefer to have them all in one place?

Collapse
 
vuong profile image
Vuong

I prefer to have them all in Windows env. Flexibility of Linux (WSL) + Windows stuffs (PowerShell) and a coolest UI of Windows Terminal. One more thing, I use scoop for programs installing.

Thread Thread
 
attkinsonjakob profile image
Jakob Attkinson

Out of curiosity, why did you choose scoop over chocolatey?

Thread Thread
 
vuong profile image
Vuong

It's simpler than choco at installing new softwares, no UAC, focusing on open-sources, installing on user-scope as default. I feel controlling scoop is nearly similar to brew or some popular linux package managers which I've used.

More details for anyone want to know:
github.com/lukesampson/scoop/wiki/...
onmsft.com/feature/scoop-or-chocol...

Collapse
 
rafi993 profile image
Rafi • Edited

WSL with Alacritty github.com/jwilm/alacritty and WSL with hyper hyper.is are both good.

Collapse
 
qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

Wouldn't you say the two are basically opposites?

Collapse
 
rafi993 profile image
Rafi

It depends on your preference since Hyper is electron based and more hackable while Alacritty is written in rust and is meant to be fast.

Collapse
 
charlesdlandau profile image
Charles Landau • Edited

I am increasingly using WSL when I use Windows. Worth a try, if you ask me.

  1. Bash, or zsh.
  2. Windows files auto mount.
  3. Setup wasn't very painful
Collapse
 
mendoza profile image
David Mendoza (He/Him)

Powershell no doubt, if you must use Windows then powershell, if you can switch to linux then any terminal.
But powershell has tons of shortcuts tailored just like Linux's so it's just comfortable.

Collapse
 
alansolitar profile image
Alan Solitar

wsl and power shell. Very interested in trying out the new windows terminal, but going to wait until official release probably.

Collapse
 
hwolfe71 profile image
Herb Wolfe

I use Conemu as well, but if you are doing a lot of SSH-ing, maybe you should look into MobaXterm?