[terminal] Alternative Windows shells, besides CMD.EXE?

I don't like CMD.EXE, the built-in Windows terminal. Among its problems:

1. Hard to copy and paste.

2. Hard to resize the window.

3. Hard to open another window (no menu options do this).

4. Seems to always start in C:\Windows\System32, which is super useless.

5. Weird scrolling. Sometimes it scrolls down really far into blank space, and you have to scroll up to where the window is actually populated.

I love Cygwin, but the problem with Cygwin is that it runs different executables. The Cygwin Python is different than the Windows Python, they are linked against different libraries and stuff.

Thanks.

At the moment there are three realy powerfull cmd.exe alternatives:

• cmder
  
• PowerCmd
• ComEmu
• Terminal for Windows 10
  

cmder is an enhancement off ConEmu and Clink

All have features like Copy & Paste, Window Resize per Mouse, Splitscreen, Tabs and a lot of other usefull features.

Try Clink. It's awesome, especially if you are used to bash keybindings and features.

(As already pointed out - there is a similar question: Is there a better Windows Console Window?)

I am a fan of Cmder, a package including clink, conemu, msysgit, and some cosmetic enhancements.

http://cmder.net/

https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder

https://chocolatey.org/packages/Cmder

1. Hard to copy and paste.

   Not true. Enable QuickEdit, either in the properties of the shortcut, or in the properties of the CMD window (right-click on the title bar), and you can mark text directly. Right-click copies marked text into the clipboard. When no text is marked, a right-click pastes text from the clipboard.

   

2. Hard to resize the window.

   True. Console2 (see below) does not have this limitation.

3. Hard to open another window (no menu options do this).

   Not true. Use start cmd or define an alias if that's too much hassle:

   doskey nw=start cmd /k $*
   

4. Seems to always start in C:\Windows\System32, which is super useless.

   Not true. Or rather, not true if you define a start directory in the properties of the shortcut

   

   or by modifying the AutoRun registry value. Shift-right-click on a folder allows you to launch a command prompt in that folder.

5. Weird scrolling. Sometimes it scrolls down really far into blank space, and you have to scroll up to where the window is actually populated

   Never happened to me.

An alternative to plain CMD is Console2, which uses CMD under the hood, but provides a lot more configuration options.