Published: Tue 05 July 2022
By Neill Cox
In Technical .
tags: Technical Windows
I've recently had to start using Windows again after a couple of years.
Generally all I do on computers is email, web browsing, and work in terminals
over ssh.
Until recently choices for terminals to run ssh in on Windows were not great.
Putty and powershell are the main choices and both have their problems.
Microsoft have produced an open source terminal emulator which is a much better
option. Better yet it's possible to install it as an unprivileged user. Recent
version require some Visual C++ libraries, which do need admin
privileges to install, so unless they're already on your machine you'll have to
use an older version.
The most recent stable version that doesn't need the extra libraries that I
could find was v1.11.2921.0 which can be downloaded here
To install download and then run the following command in a powershell window
(does not need to be an admin window):
Add-AppxPackage 'C:\path\to\download\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_1.11.2921.0_8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle'
Adjusting the path as necessary, and if you download a different version,
changing the file name to match.
Saner copy and paste than putty, recognises standard ssh config files and keys
and easier colour scheme customisation than either powershell or putty. It even
comes with Solarized.
Thanks to Phuong Nguyen for showing me this.