At last, a decent console for Windows exists. (Well, maybe...)

For many years on Windows, I used PuTTY SSH to connect to remote systems via telnet and SSH. It's an excellent SSH client and terminal console program all-in-one (along with some other SSH-related utilities). I've really enjoyed it.

In 2006 when I switched from a PC laptop to a Macbook Pro (running Apple's Mac OS X which includes a bunch of Unix functionality), I was spoiled. Apple's Terminal application made PuTTY look cheesy by comparison. Not only that, but the Mac had a real, live shell on the very same system that I could use easily within Terminal.app, or I could use the built-in command-line (CLI) SSH program to connect remotely. I loved (and still love) it!

This past autumn, I acquired a new Windows 7 PC workstation. So it was back to using PuTTY for me. But PuTTY and Windows 7 together are missing a few things:

• Tabs
  I prefer a nice tabbed interface like Apple's Terminal.app had.
• A Unix-style shell CLI
  Windows is still missing a good CLI. Yes, PowerShell is nice, but for we Unix geeks, it's still not quite there. And PowerShell, in spite of a console that's much nicer than the Windows classic cmd.exe[b] console, still launches a fresh, separate [b]cmd.exe whenever you execute one of the older .exe executables, instead of capturing the executable's console I/O and displaying it within the PowerShell console. That's just plain foolishness and stupidity on Microsoft's part, in my opinion.

A few months ago, I tried out Console in conjunction with Cygwin to replace PuTTY. I like that Cygwin includes bash, a good old Unix-style shell. But Cygwin uses either the ugly, old-and-limited cmd.exe console, or an awkward X-Windows-style console called rxvt. (There are both X and native versions of rxvt apparently--I like neither). Console was my best hope for solving the Windows lack of console problem. It would replace cmd.exe's ugly console and let me run traditional Windows EXEs, or run Cygwin's bash shell.

But at that point, Console just wasn't quite there.

Today I gave it another try. And the beta version I'm playing with WORKS! At last, I can nearly duplicate Terminal.app's functionality on Windows. I can have a local shell, execute local EXEs within a useful console, and (with the Cygwin OpenSSH package) SSH and telnet into remote systems.

I like it! I don't love it like I do Terminal.app on the Mac, but I do like it! (Well, maybe... I've just noticed some terminal quirks that might change my mind.)

I still wish there were a console that was Terminal.app's equal. Until there is, Console + Cygwin is the next-best thing.