Looking for a reliable terminal app for Windows

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Hello Friends

In Linux about terminal I use:

  • Terminal
  • Terminator
  • Kitty

And as a special case tmux.

In windows 10 since many years ago I use ConEmu. It is used since few months ago for Windows 11 too. This software is useful until some point.

But I need a Console more robust in Windows, it to have multiple tabs and internal panes such as Terminator. It for Docker, SSH and Git etc

According with your own experience in use:

Question

  • What would be your best recommendation about a Terminal very similar as in Linux for Windows?

Thank You

p.d: if you know even similar tool as tmux for windows. Pls let me know!

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I use MobaXterm - I don’t have any Windows machines in my home environment (I mostly work from home) - but - I do have to access Windows jumphosts via RDP for work - and I keep a copy of MobaXterm in there (I bought it - but I don’t re-license yearly) - I probably have it on about 6-8 Windows “jumphost” servers… I just use as a “portable application”…

I wouldn’t be able to do my job without MobaXterm - it has a bash shell internally - and run multiple tabs of it’s bash shell and use it like it’s a Linux or UNIX system - e.g. to connect to a server I simply “ssh user@hostname” (and it uses OpenSSH ssh config and SSH key management in ~/.ssh). Out of the box - MobaXterm does “X Select” style clipboard (i.e. select some text and it’s in the clipboard, middle-button paste in a terminal - and it pastes the clipboard into your terminal).

(pretty sure the “shareware” version is 100% functional - just limits the number of tabs you can run)

Some other reasonably good applications are “TaBBY” (it has Windows, MacOS and Linux versions - so it’s cross platform)… It can also do PowerShell, and I think even “CMD”…

And there’s also Microsoft Terminal App for MS Windows - it was touted as a tool for doing WSL… I think I tried it about 5 years ago and was unimpressed - but it’s VASTLY better than the legacy “shell” that Microsoft runs PowerShell and CMD in…

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Really huge thanks Dan for your feedback. I hope this weekend try to test each solution.

A cold beer to you! :beer_mug:

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To the audience, I tested the two latest mentioned

Was chosen the Tabby terminal and it is available for Linux too

Note: the third mentioned already was installed in Windows 11 Home edition

Thanks again to all

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One thing MobaXterm has over Tabby - it has a built in X server - so you can use it to display Unix or Linux GUI apps (either transparently - or - as recommended - tunnelled over SSH)…

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Thanks for that point

And just being curious, did you use that approach? I remember I used that approach and was slow. I confirmed that behavior in the web too. Well, it was as 4/5 yrs ago

If my memory does not fail me, it is about the X11DisplayOffset 10 keyword/value uncommented in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config? It to enable that feature.

Thanks!

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Why would you need a terminal app for windows ?
Press Win + X and select “Command Prompt”
or
“Windows Terminal” from the menu

The Command Prompt introduced with Windows NT (10 and 11) is not actually MS-DOS, but shares some commands with MS-DOS.

Only needed it very rare since it moved from win 3.1

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Hello Paul

With Tabby terminal you can open many tabs and split pane (vertical and horizonal) and the set of customs settings is so far much better than all the tools mentioned by your side.

With Windows Terminal is only possible split a tab vertically, about to change of colors, it is only possible for the tab’s header itself. That’s all

Yes, I used to use them years ago, but they were replaced by ConEmu, now I use Tabby

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I had a look at Tabby.
That is not a terminal, it is an OS.

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Please explain…
It seems fairly trivial to me anyway… I’ve used it on all three platforms is supports - Linux, MacOS and Windows… Sure Tabby has a lot of options… But I don’t think it’s any more complex than iTerm2 on MacOS…

But having said that - I don’t really use it…

When I’m reluctantly forced to use Windows, I use MobaXterm (this is mostly for work - when I RDP to Windows server jumphosts).
When using MacOS I use iTerm2
When using Linux (mostly Gnome on Pop!_OS) I use Gnome Terminal…

One thing I don’t like about Tabby is the opacity setting - if you have it semi opaque it makes EVERYTHING including the titlebar and menu - transparent… I don’t like that… I just want some transparency under the actual terminal…

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Perhaps i miss phrased the question

Why do i NEED terminal in windows not what does it do ?

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You can use tabby to SSH to Linux / UNIX servers… that’s it’s main use case I believe - same as MobaXterm (but that also does X applications too)… But I think you can also do stuff like use PowerShell or CMD in Tabby (I haven’t tried).

Once upon a time you could telnet from MS-DOS CMD window thingie…

These days - on Win10 with openssh installed (from Microsoft!) - you can ssh from CMD… I’ve done it before… it even supports %USERPROFILE%.ssh\ - but it’s a bit funky - i.e. on Windows there’s no 0600 octal permission - and one time I couldn’t figure out how to do the equivalent of 0600 (i.e. - on Windows -r-- — — permission) - and openssh is pretty strict and expects most of the files to be 0600… So pretty much gave up…

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I like my terminals to be simple.
I dont need tabs or split screen or comms like ssh.

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Due the following post in this network:

In the first post and figure: for the second terminal about btop is shown/listed https://alacritty.org and I confirmed it has an installer for Windows too.

Not tested yet. But is fair to do a mention and include in the list

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Alacritty has Vi mode… I like that
It is beta release at moment

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Thanks for the tip, I am considering to test it for both OS (W and L)… just I did do realize in GitHub it has a lot of “issues” reported

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I have alacritty on three systems and had zero issues.

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Interesting … and thanks for the feedback

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I know this about terminal apps, but I just found an editor called Sublime-text

It is available across Win, Linux, and Mac.
It has split screens.
When you open it, it starts a terminal window, so I guess it sort of qualifies as a terminal if all you want to do is edit.

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Thanks for the suggestion. It seems the same as Visual Studio Code with the Terminal support too.

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