
Windows Terminal Preview v0.10 Release - ducaale
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-preview-v0-10-release/
======
cmrdporcupine
Def going to give this a try today. With CLion now supporting WSL as a
toolchain I've now found myself in a strangely productive environment where
Windows + WSL is my primary environment and I barely notice the transition
between the two -- apart from the sub-par terminal experience. Looking forward
to this...

~~~
mpfundstein
I rly love 0.9 version. The only thing that annoys me is resizing. When you
open a tab and then you increase the window size, the actual terminal size is
not increases with it. At least on my computer :-)

So I always need to first make the terminal fullscreen and then open tabs.

Anyone having this as well?

~~~
eliaspro
This should be fixed in 0.10

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EastSmith
They seriously need to add a tab rename feature. Right click and rename. I am
using it for development (along WSL2) and have 4, 5 tabs opened most of the
time - a server, webpack, some ssh stuff, another server, something else.

All tabs have the same generic title name. There is a github issue, but it
does not look like they take this feature seriously:

[https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1079](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1079)

Edit: I am happy with it - they've been improving it constantly (for the last
4 months at least).

~~~
mika9090
Not as good as right click but can be done from the command line (PS)
$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "Corona"

~~~
EastSmith
This does not work on WSL2 (Ubuntu), but thanks.

~~~
zadjii
Pretty much every shell has its own mechanism for updating the title - the
parent comment just shared the `powershell` way of setting the title. I'm
confident that if you search for "set title from <your shell here>", you'll
find plenty of posts on how to do it.

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logifail
Disappointed that this release appears not to be supported on Windows 10
Enterprise LTSC 2019, which is what I have available:

Add-AppPackage -path
.\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_0.10.761.0_8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle

Add-AppPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CFD, A Prerequisite
for an install could not be satisfied. Windows cannot install package
Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_0.10.761.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe because this package
is not compatible with the device. The package requires OS version
10.0.18362.0 or higher on the Windows.Mobile device family. The device is
currently running OS version 10.0.17763.1098.

~~~
hoffs
It's not this release, but like since forever. There's a note in the github
readme: > Note: Windows Terminal requires Windows 10 1903 (build 18362) or
later

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oefrha
Wow. I downloaded and launched this, and immediately wanted to change the font
size. Took me a good minute to find the settings button (cmd and Powershell
both have a right click menu on the title bar, this one does not), and
clicking on it opens a JSON config file with Visual Studio. Guess it's far
from <s>ready for everyday use</s> release quality at the moment.

Disclaimer: I'm primarily a Mac user developing on macOS and Linux. Swears by
iTerm 2.

~~~
vips7L
It's actually very ready for everyday use, even for a 0.1 release. It's the
best terminal I've used so far on windows and Linux.

~~~
JdeBP
Do you not use italics or strikethrough, then? Or scrolling regions? (Full-
screen TUI programs rely upon setting scrolling regions to significantly speed
up pane scrolls, so don't start by saying that you never use them.)

You are not the first person to go overboard calling it the best terminal
ever. It clearly is not, yet. The developers themselves acknowledge that
there's a way to go, yet, and maintain to-do lists of the many things that it
as yet lacks. It does make me wonder, when it has simple deficiencies compared
to the likes of XTerm, how seriously the people who claim "best terminal ever"
have actually exercised any of these programs.

~~~
vips7L
Italics/strikethrough and TUI programs aren't in my use case at all. I'm on
windows I'm using my terminal for my shell and not for UI programs.

> It's the best terminal I've used so far on windows and Linux.

Again its the best that I'VE used for MY use cases.

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hs86
As a tmux user the missing mouse support was a deal-breaker. It seems like I
have no excuses left to remain on mintty. :)

~~~
laumars
Each to their own and all but I've always found it weird that some tmux users
would spend hours setting up their keyboard driven interfaces (the terminal)
and then prefer to use the mouse to switch between different applications
running on it. Particularly when tmux has such a great support for keyboard
hotkeys. I'm not out to criticise anyone's preferred workflow but it is a
pattern that has always taken me a little by surprise.

~~~
jayjader
For things like altering split-pane layouts, mouse remains king for both
quickly & precisely adjusting width and height - at the same time, no less.
Quickly moving focus to 1 random pane out of 6+ is also a single input,
whereas with keys it can be up to ~(total number of panes - 1).

It's also a single config option to enable all mouse functionality, whereas
setting up keybindings do just the resizing takes several lines.

~~~
laumars
> _For things like altering split-pane layouts, mouse remains king for both
> quickly & precisely adjusting width and height - at the same time, no less.
> Quickly moving focus to 1 random pane out of 6+ is also a single input,
> whereas with keys it can be up to ~(total number of panes - 1)._

You're not taking into account moving your hands from the keyboard and to the
mouse, shacking it to find which where and on which screen your mouse cursor
is located, and then putting your hands back on the keyboard after the resize.

However what we're really arguing about is negligible micro-optimisations
anyway so it's a little silly to say one is faster or slower than another. :)

> _It 's also a single config option to enable all mouse functionality,
> whereas setting up keybindings do just the resizing takes several lines._

Keybindings for selecting and resizing panes are already defined in tmux's
defaults. You don't need to configure nor enable it. However it is something
you'd need to look up, commit to memory, then muscle memory after. Which I
guess creates enough of an hurdle that many people haven't bothered to jump.

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greggman3
How does Windows Terminal compare to say Cmder

[https://cmder.net/](https://cmder.net/)

I tried terminal 0.9 and it crashed almost immediately (probably related to
Japanese or something) so I don't yet have confidence in Windows Terminal

~~~
Ayesh
Cmder builds on top of cmd.exe, and Windows Terminal is on PowerShell.

Cmder has a super precise and verbose settings UI. WT is config file for now.

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techntoke
Can't really put it to good use unless they release WSL 2 to Windows 10 1909
stable. Opting into the Windows Inside Program requires that you enable full
diagnostic data being sent to Microsoft.

~~~
chokolad
> Can't really put it to good use unless they release WSL 2 to Windows 10 1909
> stable. Opting into the Windows Inside Program requires that you enable full
> diagnostic data being sent to Microsoft.

I use WT and native SSH (windows 10 now has openssh compiled for it and I
think it's in default install these days) to connect to Linux boxes instead of
say Putty.

~~~
techntoke
As do I, but in that case there are few practical benefits opposed to
Alacritty.

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malux85
2020\. v0.10 of terminal

~~~
hajhatten
Microsoft had to catch up sometime?

~~~
sgt
Finally a great terminal (although still bare bones) for Windows! Just 20
years late... we wanted that back in 2000. Instead if we had to use Windows,
we got CMD.EXE that could easily resize vertically and not horizontally.

~~~
malux85
I would say 40 years late, but our point is the same!

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kesor
Tried Terminal Preview and Hyper and Alacritty to get a decent working
terminal, finally ended up using SSH and PuTTY that actually looks okay and
works okay. Still has problems with some unicode characters. But PuTTY is
mature and had support for mouse since when? 10, 15 years ago?

~~~
qayxc
You do realise the difference between a console and a terminal app?

The terminal app is no replacement for PuTTY - they're orthogonal use cases.
Terminal is a host app for text-based shells, no more, no less.

~~~
mehrdadn
Console = terminal in my lingo. PuTTY is a console/terminal, plus an SSH
client. What definitions are you using by comparison?

~~~
JdeBP
That is not the widely-used terminology of Microsoft Windows where a console
is a specific I/O mechanism, different from a terminal.

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/tui-console-and-terminal-paradigms.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/tui-console-and-terminal-paradigms.html)

That the word "console" may denote other things, including a part of a pipe
organ, is irrelevant. When discussing _Windows Terminal_ one is almost always
talking about the _Microsoft Windows_ I/O mechanism, that's been around since
Windows NT 3.

* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/console/consoles](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/console/consoles)

(The parenthetical "terminal" is a relatively recent addition to the doco. Not
a wise one in my view, because it confuses more than it clarifies.)

~~~
mehrdadn
That definition isn't really used consistently by Microsoft as far as I've
been able to tell (though I think it was in the past). If you go by that
traditional Win32 definition then "CreatePseudoConsole" should've been called
CreatePseudoTerminal or CreatePTY... after all, Windows already has real
console functionality; it doesn't need a pseudo-console. It needs a pseudo-
TTY. And if you go by that definition then IMHO the "Windows Terminal" would
need to be called the "Windows Console"...

But honestly usage of the word "console" was clearly not what the parent's
argument was about, which makes it kind of irrelevant to the whole
discussion...

Edit: Regarding your edit linking to where even Microsoft says "A console (or
terminal) ...": you can dismiss it all you want, but I rest my case.

~~~
JdeBP
It's only irrelevant if your immediately equating console and terminal in
response, and then _asking for_ a definition, was irrelevant. Were you
irrelevant? (-:

I dismiss it because there's a mountain of usage contradicting that johnny-
come-lately parenthetical. It's a well-known distinction; documented by lots
of people, including me for about two decades now (actually longer, 2000 is
simply when I wrote the FGA).

And if your case is based upon the Win32 API function naming scheme, your case
is founded on sand. I should not need to explain why to any Win32 developer.
(-:

In reality, the thing that ConPTY gives one is _not_ a pseudo-terminal,
because the wrapped applications are talking to _consoles_ as far as they are
concerned. It's not the simple implementation that I would have chosen
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818942)).

It's a much more ambitious architecture, that aims to let terminal I/O
applications talk to Win32 consoles as if they were old 1980s terminals, to
let 1990s and later Win32 console applications have their I/O driven via
systems that ship terminal I/O, and to let both the old 1980s terminal I/O
applications and the 1990s and later console I/O applications almost
seamlessly share a common screen and input buffer.

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aliswe
I don't know if this is by design, but Ctrl+V still doesn't work. Shift+Insert
does though.

~~~
Yizahi
Meanwhile my corporation just bought new HP ZBook 14 which don't have Insert
key. Instead it has dumb phone keys and something with a monitor painted on, 3
useless buttons instead of proper keys. No sysrq, no pause/break either. And
this modes is supposedly for "work", not for gaming or media (from marketing
point of view).

It is so frustrating to press extra keys just to have ctrl+ins and shift+ins.

~~~
vezycash
Can't you give it back to the corporation? Else, this is only the beginning of
your frustrations. The next upgrade would almost certainly be worse.

~~~
Yizahi
This is a centralized upgrade, so they won't change the contract just for me
and we don't have a BYOD policy here. Anyway - external KB alleviates it
mostly, I'm just ranting at a corporations making "Pro" or "Workstation"
devices clearly downgraded for these same categories - professional workers.
Macbooks without F keys, lenovo cutting keyboards from best in industry to
"meh" and so on.

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GeertVL
Any good tips and tricks on how to get the max out of Windows Terminal?

~~~
delduca
tmux

~~~
whiskeymikey
There's a great guide on how to set up tmux on WSL here:
[https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on-
wi...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on-windows-with-
wsl-docker-tmux-and-vscode)

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chrisan
Is there a way to resize a pane? Normally one of my panes is just to run a
process (like a local server) where I don't need to see output from it and 2
or 3 lines would suffice

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gigatexal
looking good -- looks like they're taking the good parts of iterm2 and other
terminal emulators -- keep it up!

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classified
Windows desperately needs a decent terminal. The parody used in cmd or the
Ubuntu app is ludicrously bad.

~~~
TotempaaltJ
This is what you're looking for. Windows Terminal is very good and very
rapidly improving.

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crispyambulance
OK, now I am really confused...

I can, right now, launch 4 different "terminals" in windows:

    
    
      > cmd -- gives me the old dos-like command line
      > wsl -- linux bash shell, which distro.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      > ubuntu -- ubuntu distribution, "on-top" of wsl?
      > powershell -- new microsoft command line
    

Now, there's a "windows terminal"??? I don't get it. Is it supposed to be a
"terminal emulator" like putty or terminus that can use any of the above 4?
Does it emulate a VT100? with mouse?

This is confusing, how do these 5 things fit together?

~~~
wffurr
Yes, Windows terminal can run any of those shells.

Shell = interactive program.

Terminal = thing that displays a shell and sends input to it.

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Traubenfuchs
Why is she using PowerShell Core (v6) instead of PowerShell 7? This kind of
shows that Windows Terminal developers are not that excited about PowerShell.

What's the relationship between PowerShell and Windows Terminal anyways? Which
are you supposed to use for what? Are you supposed to run one within the
other?

~~~
dgellow
> What's the relationship between PowerShell and Windows Terminal anyways?
> Which are you supposed to use for what? Are you supposed to run one within
> the other?

Seems quite clear to me. Powershell is a shell, while Windows Terminal is a
console. Windows Terminal can run any shell, such as Bash, Powershell 5,
Powershell 6, cmd.exe, git shell, azure shell, etc.

Instead of each shell having its own console implementation, you have one,
Windows Terminal.

~~~
laumars
> Windows Terminal is a console

Terminal emulator :)

"Console" can have a multitude of different meanings.

~~~
dgellow
Sure. While technically correct that’s also confusing to anyone who doesn’t
know what a terminal was/is, and why it has to be emulated!

The entire terminology is a mess :p

~~~
laumars
I agree but it is what it is. The world is full of terminology that are
steeped in legacy and sometimes don't even mean what the words literally
describe. Why is a save icon a blue and grey box? What discs are those DJs
spinning on their MBPs? Why do people hoover with their Dysons and Google in
Bing? Why is fibre internet called "broadband" when fibre optics operate on a
narrowband? Human languages are a clusterfuck at times.

