Help me make my windows cmd.exe console work more like a Linux terminal

Question

The windows terminal (the user-interface around text-applications like cmd.exe) really sucks.

There is so much that the Unix-style terminals do that the windows terminal

Answer 1

Not a direct answer, but since you will occasionally HAVE to work in a windows CMD window there are 2 settings that are absolutely necessary to make it tollerable.

One of the very first things I do when I get on a new computer is set the screen buffer size to 9999(height), 300(or sow width). This allows you to scroll left and right to your hearts delight, and gives you a significant buffer for examining logs. Don't set the window size, it's virtually useless.

the other thing I do is check the "QuickEdit" mode, this makes copy/past much easier, and you can quickly pause a scrolling screen by clicking/dragging in it(to begin a selection).

This isn't exactly a solution to the problem, just related advise that might be useful to solve the specific problem he mentioned in a different way (And a very useful habit!).

Answer 2

Instead of trying to force the Unix behaviour on Windows - which would be a bit unnatural - why don't you check out PowerShell, Microsoft's next generation shell for Windows?

Answer 3

IF YOU WANT A CYGWIN ALTERNATIVE

npm install -g cash-global

There is a well written blog about The Cash Shell .

You can also check out the npm package here.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

To change the size of the cmd prompt, you can either change the window size from the properties box, which will only resize the window itself, or/and you can change the buffer size, which will resize the ... how to describe it, the number of remembered lines. To access the properties toolbox, right click on the title bar and properties.

Also, if you want to quickly copy stuff from the cmd prompt, enable the "quick edit" box in the properties window - it will enable you to select stuff, and "copy" it with a right click.

Answer 5

Use Console 2, perhaps? It's really quite stable now, and allows you to switch between cmd/PowerShell/cygwin/any other shell very easily. If we're honest about it, it's not likely Microsoft are going to improve the native Win32 console any time soon.

Answer 6

One of the first things I do to all my Windows machines is install Cygwin

There are some extensions for Cygwin too , like ssh and such.