
Introducing Windows Terminal - ghewgill
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windows-terminal/
======
sys_64738
I have to hand it to Microsoft. WSL 2, Windows Terminal, and Edge based on
Chromium. Microsoft really is doing some fantastic work for their users.

Meanwhile, macOS will get new emojis in 10.15.

~~~
vlunkr
macOS already has a great terminal app. Microsoft is just playing catch up on
really old features.

~~~
johnnyballgame
Hardly playing catch up here. They've much surpassed anything Apple has done
in recent years, in both software AND hardware.

Also, I don't recall macOS terminal being open source.

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

~~~
gigatexal
Surpassed in every way huh? How’s that preloaded bejeweled app treating you?
Still loving all that telemetry?

MacOS + brew + iterm2 and ZSH make it the best developer setup

~~~
crispinb
Well except you're not allowed to run MacOS on a laptop with a real keyboard.

(To be quite honest I agree - but Apple doesn't make any hardware of interest
to me to run MacOS on).

~~~
gigatexal
Yeah I will give you that. The apple keyboard that comes with the Macs is a
cluster __ __for sure. But... while Apple has done more for the industry in my
opinion to force the other manufacturers to move their hardware to a higher
build quality profile etc., the OS is still what I find the most compelling --
mostly because I am all in on Apple services (iMessage, iCloud, keychain,
etc.) and things often look more appealing on the Mac (yeah I spend most of my
time in the terminal but I do like things that look good -- high DPI on linux
is almost there just not quite there yet imo). Basically it comes down to
productivity and for me it 's on a Mac, that keyboard be damned.*

I use an external Magic Keyboard 2 without the 10-key as it fits on top of the
keyboard of my MacBook as if it should have been the keyboard all this time.
But it was an expensive keyboard and not a suggestion I would give many people
-- the keyboard should just work.

~~~
crispinb
Fair enough. I didn't want to live with the loss of the Fn keys as much as
anything. But my decision to jump the Apple ship was also partly economic, and
if not for that additional pressure I'm not sure what I would have done.

So after a long time having been OS X-exclusive, for the past year I've used
both Windows 10 and Linux. I've really been equally happy and frustrated with
each - all 3 of the majors have their strengths and weaknesses. I think OS X
overall has the balance I prefer, but it's by a far smaller margin than I
would have thought, say, 5 years ago.

~~~
gigatexal
And there I agree with you, too. Laptops really have come a long way in build
quality and usability.

I want a new MacBook but will likely wait until my late model top-of-the-line
2013 MacBook Pro dies and buy the Arm based ones they're rumored to release
because I simply can't afford a 3k+ laptop now.

~~~
vetinari
Even if some folks do not care about absolute monetary price, there can be
other hurdles. For example, for corporate purchases, there are countries where
you have per item limit, up until which you can expense your purchases into
given year, or above which you must depreciate the item.

In my country, Apple computers moved into the _must depreciate for 4 years_
territory, which is simply unacceptable to corporate buyers there (as
depreciated asset, it the paperwork is more involved, and therefore needs
additional time and expenses). Meanwhile, Lenovo or Dell sales know how to
make the price right, so everybody is satisfied.

My 2015 rMBP was 1 EUR below this limit. I don't know what to replace it with,
if needed.

~~~
anticensor
Amortisation burocracy is not that complicated. 4 book records and one
additional document per year, well under £1 in labour and paper. Source:my dad
is a former accountant

~~~
vetinari
Here, it is 2 records at purchase (purchase+asset creation) per item, 1 every
month (depreciation) per item, plus 1 yearly (accounting for deferred tax
assets). Then some at the end of the period (reconciliation of the deferred
tax, asset retirement). The period has to be tracked per each item. Each asset
has to have its asset card and a tag.

For machinery and buildings, OK. But for a laptop, that maybe barely survives
it's depreciation period? Well, no. Folks have other things to do than
paperwork for laptops.

The entire point of the asset depreciation is, that the state wants the tax
money as soon as possible, and shift your deductibles into future. What you
want, is to shift as much as possible of your deductibles into the current
year (and it is cash out in this year, after all). I and many others don't see
why small, relatively quickly consumable items like laptops should be handled
the way big assets are, and the sales at other vendors understand that very
well.

If you are a small company with external accountant, it will be significantly
more than 1 EUR in labor and paper.

------
SyneRyder
If someone wants an app idea (which might now be possible since Windows
Terminal is open source & DirectX based)...

I've been looking for a Windows replacement to Cathode [1], a macOS app that
makes the terminal look like a CRT monitor. Not just the colour scheme & font,
but with screen jitter, image persistence & glow, static, scanlines and even
sound effects sampled from old computers. For the times I have to use a
terminal, it really makes me smile & enjoy the work.

Linux has Cool Retro Term which is similar, and there have been efforts to
port that to Windows that have failed. I could probably run Cool Retro Term
under WSL2, but Windows deserves something native.

It seems more likely that an indie developer might be able to fork Terminal &
create their own than Microsoft building this in. (As much as I like the idea
of Windows having a Fruity IIe terminal theme built-in.)

Cathode charges $5 which is much too cheap - I'd pay $20 easily (maybe more)
for something that brightens up my work day the way Cathode does.

[1]
[http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)

------
Insanity
Good on them for making CMD more modern.

But I'm not a fan of the ligatures they've shown in the video / screenshots.
This was discussed on HN recently after this article got posted:
[https://practicaltypography.com/ligatures-in-programming-
fon...](https://practicaltypography.com/ligatures-in-programming-fonts-hell-
no.html)

Luckily, the font seems to just be an option and not something forced on you.

~~~
mixmastamyk
CMD hasn't really been touched, though the console subsystem has, and now
terminal-esq functionality debuts.

~~~
sys_64738
I noticed DOSKey seems to be default in recent versions of command.com.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Cmd.exe you mean? Believe that functionality has been around for a while.

------
chokolad
And here is MIT-licensed source code for it
[https://github.com/microsoft/terminal](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal)

------
jitl
Given that the existing terminals for Windows range from archaic (Console,
PowerShell) to mediocre (ConEmu, Cmder), this move makes total sense.

I’m excited to use the new terminal with WSL2 - maybe it will come close to
iTerm2 with Docker.

~~~
nailer
Hyper, Terminus, Alacritty, and Fluent Terminal are all excellent.

Also Powershell is a shell not a terminal and it's awesome.

~~~
yboris
I'm a huge fan of Terminus for Windows (and I use Hyper on Mac) -- great
alternatives to the usual:
[https://eugeny.github.io/terminus/](https://eugeny.github.io/terminus/)

~~~
nailer
Hyper 3 Canary works a lot better on Windows than 2 did if you feel like
trying it.

~~~
yboris
Thanks! I've been away from my Windows machine for 2 months; I'm eager to try
Hyper 3 when I'm back.

------
klemola
I haven't seen Alacritty mentioned yet as an existing alternative for built-in
terminals. It's modern, configurable and really fast (thanks to GPU
acceleration and possibly Rust). I've enjoyed using it with W10 native
OpenSSH.

[https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty)

~~~
nailer
No tabs though (deliberately). You'll need to add a tabbing window manager to
add them.

~~~
solarkraft
What tabbing Window managers are there for Windows? In terms of desktop
replacements I only know Cairo (but that doesn't touch windows).

~~~
abdusco
There's Groupy from Stardock

[https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/](https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/)

------
m1keil
Happy to see it's not another Electron based terminal

------
modzu
its interesting how long its taking for MS to do command-line well and linux
to do the gui well. after decades you would think each could be considered a
solved problem, at least given that they are solved by their respective OSes,
yet there has not been the convergence you might expect

------
amanzi
This looks great. I've tried many of the other terminal options on Windows
(ConEmu, Cmdr, Hyper, etc) and none have been great and always found myself
resorting back to the plain old command prompt.

~~~
electrotype
I've used ConEmu a lot, now I use ConsoleZ on Windows. It's simple and it just
works.

[https://github.com/cbucher/console](https://github.com/cbucher/console)

------
eBombzor
Trying to build from it requires VS + 16GB of build tools... what in the
world.

~~~
crispinb
I think you can install msbuild + tools without VS. No doubt still pretty big
though. More than I can be arsed with just for this purpose. Will have to wait
for the release.

~~~
solarkraft
They really need to step up their VS-less developer tools (which mostly means
packaging & documentation).

~~~
tanseydavid
Also requires WIN10 SDK to build.

------
president
Will content in the terminal re-render when the window is resized or will it
be like Putty where only new content fills the whole window (annoying)?

~~~
strmpnk
From a quick search on the repository, the answer seems to be yes, it does
support reflow:
[https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&...](https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=reflow)

------
solarkraft
Everyone who wants this but prefers not downloading 16 Gigabytes of Visual
Studio to build this should have a look at Fluent Terminal [1], which can be
installed through chocolatey and in my opinion even looks a little better
(might not have all of the features, though).

I've been using it for a while and have been very happy with it and have for
all that time wished that they would just adopt it as a default app. Oh look
:-)

[1]:
[https://github.com/felixse/FluentTerminal](https://github.com/felixse/FluentTerminal)

------
bloopernova
Is this different to the thread earlier today?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840447)

~~~
paulddraper
This is the original source.

------
jonhendry18
Does anyone know if the default cut/copy/paste key equivalents in Windows
Terminal are ctrl-x/ctrl-c/ctrl-v like everything else in Windows, or is it
still that weird system from CMD.EXE which is an abomination unto Nuggan?

I haven't been able to find this out. I even tweeted at someone on the Windows
Terminal team and didn't get a response.

EDIT: I looked through the github repo and it _does_ appear to support sane
key equivalents. Nuggan be praised!

------
halotrope
This is great. I recently shifted to woking more with windows/WSL after much
frustration with mac. However the terminal experience was not great. The
electron based options where not fast enough, default WSL shell was comparably
fast to iTerm but did not even have basic tabs. Microsoft is really doing a
lot of good and exciting stuff nowadays.

------
giancarlostoro
How long till somebody goes through and ports it to Linux I wonder. Then
Microsoft maintains the port turning it into the most powerful cross platform
terminal emulator somehow. Also Mac please. But I am likely getting ahead of
myself.

~~~
code_duck
Who on earth would want that? People who have only ever used Microsoft
products?

~~~
giancarlostoro
People who want cross platform tooling like a cross platform editor

------
cmarschner
The real question is - can it display videos using sixel?

------
netheril96
So, UTF-8 support?

~~~
kbumsik
Presumably. They announced they are working on UTF-8 support last year while
building a new TTY-ish subsystem. [1] So their work will likely land to the
new terminal.

[1]: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-
command-l...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-command-line-
unicode-and-utf-8-output-text-buffer/)

------
secondtruck
transparency at last -- i hope its customizable

------
ivalm
So the main differentiator is a prettier terminal window relative to microsoft
console?

~~~
pixelbash
And apparently being able to add new features without "breaking the world"

~~~
i386
Raymond Chen had a good explanation for why the've been very hesitant to
modernise cmd.exe but I can't seem to find it.

~~~
heinrich5991
I'm interested in case you or someone else finds it. :)

~~~
Insanity
In this blogpost I found a possible reference to it:
[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060427-21/?p=31...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060427-21/?p=31383)

Saying "shipping a new command shell". Unfortunately the URL gives me a 403.

~~~
fermentation
Is it me or does that last bit seem weirdly passive aggressive

~~~
Insanity
The last part of my comment? :O surely wasn't intentional if do :)

~~~
robrtsql
They probably meant the last line of the post you linked.

> So good luck with your replacement command shell. I hope you figure out how
> to run batch files.

Yep, seems passive aggressive

~~~
Insanity
Yup, that makes more sense :)

------
10eleven
Great! Now if we could just switch the path separator over to /

~~~
nailer
You can type / and it works in Powershell.

I've been using Unix for 20 years, switch to pwsh 2 years ago, never typed
backslash ever.

~~~
eBombzor
Powershell is considerably slower than cmd. Does that not bother you?

~~~
majkinetor
It starts under 1s without modules. That is enough fast and still infinitely
distant feature-wise of cmd.exe. You can make it go over 1m+ if you have a lot
of modules to load, particularly with method of writing modules where you put
functions into separate files (and no SSD) and/or some specific cmdlets in the
profile. It can even be worst then that in particular environment - for
instance within VSCode some of my scripts can take several minutes loading
(while being otherwise instant).

In other words, you can balance your environment for speed vs features.

I believe Pwsh will get considerably faster in the future given that
optimizing it will pay out on nano server which currently boots faster then
PowerShell is loaded in it afterwards (which rly sux).

------
781
FFS, why didn't they also provide a binary download? I don't want to download
it and build it...

~~~
naikrovek
Because it isn't ready for general consumption, yet.

Case in point: I compiled it quite easily and it crashes on launch. Not ready
for widespread use, yet.

~~~
sterlind
Make sure you enable developer mode in the Windows Store settings, and then
deploy the CascadiaPackage app (set as start-up project + F5 in VS, not sure
off-hand how to do it from the command prompt.) That fixed it for me.

------
laythea
Wow, so much marketing voodoo for a text terminal!

~~~
sudhirj
That’s because the understand the value of developer mindshare. Billions on
Github and they haven’t wrecked it (yet), Linux layers on Windows, .Net open
sourced. The lack of nice terminal options (please don’t say ConEmu is nice,
it’s functional, not the same thing) was certainly a factor.

They’re chipping away at each little thing that holds devs away and making
sure the world knows it.

~~~
flukus
> They’re chipping away at each little thing that holds devs away and making
> sure the world knows it.

It's worth keeping in mind why, it's to get developers interested in their
proprietary platforms. These are the embrace and extend steps.

Let me know when they switch to GPL licenses and can't pull the extinguish
step.

