What is Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is a new, modern, feature-rich, productive terminal application for command-line users. It does not differ much from the Command Prompt having borrowed some features of Powershell. Windows Terminal is actually a cmd.exe shell with major improvements

In the early humble days, at least in the history of technology in Zambia, most of us got introduced to the Disk Operating System and the rising to dominance MS-DOS. But before we could graduate there was Windows NT ushering in the solid foundation of Windows Server and operating system from 2000 and up along giving us the Command Prompt the cmd.exe shell.

You can also read about:

• 10 Windows Commands Every System Admin must know

• PowerShell Commands For Beginners

• 15 Windows Command Prompts

And as we enriched our progress into the present Windows technology cmd.exe was losing touch and many cli lovers felt of something more powerful. And so there came along initially a Windows component only code-named Monad in 2006. This is what was later known as Powershell on version 1.0.

But it was 10 years later when PowerShell made cross-platform on August 18, 2016, as PowerShell Core built on .NET. As Powershell has become more popular the cmd.exe has been maintained only because of legacy compatibility.

And so from Windows 10 development feedback, the Windows Console and command-line team was formed and has since made major improvements to the Windows Console giving us the Windows Terminal.

So the new Windows Terminal includes many of the features most frequently requested by the Windows command-line community including support for tabs, rich text, globalization, configurability, theming & styling, and more.

Windows Terminal Compatibility

You must be running Windows 1903 (build >= 10.0.18362.0) or later to run Windows Terminal

You can install Windows Terminal from Microsoft Store

Follow the Windows Terminal team at Github for updates and features.