Book Image

Windows Terminal Tips, Tricks, and Productivity Hacks

By : Will Fuqua
5 (1)
Book Image

Windows Terminal Tips, Tricks, and Productivity Hacks

5 (1)
By: Will Fuqua

Overview of this book

Windows Terminal is a new and open-source command-line application for Windows 10, built for the Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and more. It's fast, modern, and configurable thanks to its GPU-accelerated rendering, excellent UTF-8 support, and JSON-based configurability, and this book can help you learn how to leverage these features. You’ll start by learning the benefits of Windows Terminal and its open-source development, as well as how to use the built-in tabs, panes, and key bindings to build your own efficient terminal workflows. After you’ve mastered Windows Terminal, this book shows how to use and configure PowerShell Core and the Windows Subsystem for Linux within Windows Terminal. You’ll maximize your productivity using powerful tools such as PSReadLine for PowerShell and ZSH on Linux, and discover useful tips and tricks for common developer tools like Git and SSH. Finally, you’ll see how Windows Terminal can be used in common development and DevOps tasks, such as developing frontend JavaScript applications and backend REST APIs, and managing cloud-based systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. By the end of this book, you'll not only be well-versed with Windows Terminal, but also have learned how to effectively use shells like PowerShell Core and ZSH to become proficient at the command line.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introducing the New Windows Terminal
5
Section 2: Configuring your Windows Terminal and its shells
12
Section 3: Using your Windows Terminal for development

Why use the Windows Subsystem for Linux?

Sometimes, certain tasks, such as frontend development or server management, are easier on Linux/Unix systems. While most popular frameworks, tools, and programming languages support both Windows and Linux, it's common to find parts of the ecosystem that don't; common culprits are smaller third-party libraries, plugins, or packages.

WSL2 provides a fast, lightweight way to run Linux programs on Windows. In this way, it's similar to Cygwin or MinGW. WSL2 has several benefits over these existing tools; it's faster, more compatible, and has deep integration with Windows 10. Many popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, SUSE, Kali, and more, are available directly from the Microsoft Store, and Linux kernel updates are provided through Windows Update.

Note: WSL1 versus WSL2

The Windows Subsystem for Linux has two different versions. Version 1, initially released in 2016, was essentially a translation layer between...