UPDATE 2024-04-15: Windows Terminal 1.19 contains a fix that reduces latency by half! It’s now competitive with WSLtty on my machine. Details in the GitHub Issue.
In 2009, I wrote about why MinTTY is the best terminal on Windows. Even today, that post is one of my most popular.
MinTTY in 2009
Since then, the terminal situation on Windows has improved:
Cygwin defaults to MinTTY; you no longer need to manually install it.
Windows added PTY support, obviating the need for offscreen console window hacks that add latency.
Windows added basically full support for ANSI terminal sequences in both the legacy conhost.exe consoles and its new Windows Terminal.
We now have a variety of terminals to choose from, even on Windows: Cmder, ConEmu, Alacritty, WezTerm, xterm.js (component of Visual Studio Code)
The beginning of a year is a great time to look at your tools and improve your environment.
I’d already enabled 24-bit color in all of my environments and streamlined my tmux config. It’s about time that I take a look at the newer terminals.
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