Has anyone found a (eg bash) shell terminal for Windows as good as the OS X one?

Question

I am mostly using 'git-bash' which came with the Windows install of Git vcs. I think it is the same one that comes with Cygwin. It works fine technically but the UI sucks:

• have to right-click the title bar and go to Properties to change the window width
• most annoyingly... copy and paste and highlight with the mouse are equally cumbersome

In contrast, the Terminal app that comes with OS X manages these with aplomb and makes it so much more comfortable to work with. You can even drag and drop a file on it and it will paste the file path in at your cursor!

I have also tried:

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/win-bash
• http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/bash/
• http://www.hamiltonlabs.com/cshell.htm

None of these do copy and paste of text without cumbersome right-clicking.

I am specifically looking for a Unix-flavoured shell in Windows so I don't have to use different shells between my home dev (Windows), the live server (Linux) or dev at the office (Mac).

Yes I have Googled and haven't found one yet...

Answer 1

Have you tried console2?

It lets you use cmd, bash, or any program as your shell, and allows resizing in any direction.

You can make it default to Git Bash by going to Edit->Settings, then pasting this in the Shell field:

"C:\Program Files\Git\bin\sh.exe" --login -i"

To copy, hold Shift, click and drag with the left mouse button to select, then left click to Copy.

Finally, Git ships with rxvt. You could create a new Windows shortcut with the Target field set to:

"C:\Program Files\Git\bin\rxvt.exe" -e /bin/sh --login -i

Answer 2

[Reposting my comment as an answer at Anentropic's request.]

If you're using Cygwin and like PuTTY, check out mintty. It's available in the Shells category in the Cygwin setup program (or get the source here). The author used large parts of PuTTY to create it, so it behaves very much like PuTTY. It can be configured to work like you'd like it to:

• Resize the window just by dragging the edges or corners, like any other Windows app. This will resize the terminal by add or removing rows and/or columns, like you'd expect from something like xterm.
• Copy/paste can be configured as single-click operations (e.g. left click to highlight and auto-copy, right click to extend, middle click to paste).
• As with OS X Terminal, dragging a file or folder into a mintty window will paste the full path at the cursor position.
• All Windows drives are available, "mounted" by default under /cygdrive (though I usually change this to /mnt with mount -c /mnt).

My only problem with mintty is that recent versions (0.9.4+) seem to be doing something that Windows 7 UAC doesn't like, so it prompts for permission to run it every time. This seems to cause it to run with different privileges, so things like my network drives don't work. I don't know if this is a mintty problem, or a problem with my system, though.

Answer 3

I wish that PuTTY was able to work as an emulator for local OS access like Cygwin does. PuTTY is my favorite when I am stuck on a Windows box. I voted this question up, I would love to know about a better emulator for Windows as well.

Answer 4

The big problem with copy and paste isn't fault of the terminal emulators; it's the keybinding themselves.

When the shortcuts were invented in Mac, Apple added a new key for them: the 'command key' (also known as 'splat') It doesn't have an ASCII equivalent.

A few years later, when Microsoft copied the same shortcuts, PC keyboards didn't have any 'windows', or 'menu' keys, so they went with another little used key you could hold with your pinky: the Ctrl key. Problem is, that Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, etc. are valid ASCII codes, and heavily used on command line interfaces.

So, when you press Ctrl-C on a Windows ternimal, should it copy the text or break the running command?