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Jakob Attkinson
Jakob Attkinson

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Recommended Terminal for Windows?

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 spending a few minutes configuring and setting tasks accordingly.

Alt Text

Lately, however, I had to dig deeper into servers and ConEmu started to fail on me. SSH-ing into a remote server, connecting to a specific docker container and trying to nano a basic file wouldn't allow me to properly visualize the file (let alone navigate or modify it).

Therefore, here's my question for my fellow Windows users: what do you use / recommend? I'm kinda stuck and I'm not sure how to proceed in my day-to-day tasks.

P.S. I've read about the new Windows Terminal (preview). Haven't tried it yet, but I assume there's gonna be a while until a stable version will be released.

Top comments (17)

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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...

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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.

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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.

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Jakob Attkinson

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

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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).

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vuong profile image
vuong ⛈️

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

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attkinsonjakob profile image
Jakob Attkinson

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

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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.

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Jakob Attkinson

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

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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...

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rafi993 profile image
Rafi • Edited

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

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Mihail Malo

Wouldn't you say the two are basically opposites?

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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.

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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
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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.

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Alan Solitar

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

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Herb Wolfe

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