When comparing Windows Terminal vs tmux, the Slant community recommends Windows Terminal for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for Windows?” Windows Terminal is ranked 8th while tmux is ranked 15th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Official Microsoft product
Pro Is an *actual* terminal emulator--what a Linux user would expect--like xterm
Not a command prompt/processor (i.e. shell) but a host for such applications.
Pro Multiple shell support
Pro Open Source under the MIT License
Pro Easy and well documented JSON settings
Pro Microsoft is nailing on its features
Pro Easily split panes
There is a keyboard shortcut that makes it easy to split a window and create more panes.
Pro Windows linked to sessions
tmux calls the individual shell instances windows. They are displayed like tabs in the status line. These windows can be shared between different sessions, so that any given shell instance can be in any number of tmux sessions used for different purposes or by different users. This allows configurations like the following example: User A: wAB, wA1, wA2; User B: wB1, wAB, wB2
Pro Preserve the state
As long as you don't close your session, you may even lose your SSH connection, it'll keep your state just as it was. So you can resume where you left off (via tmux attach
).
Pro Maximize screen space
As a tiling window manager, it'll make use of all the space. As you have multiple workspaces and you can resize, etc. you can adjust to see what matters most.
Pro Frequently updated
Tmux is in a state of constant development. Updates are frequent and bug reports usually get an answer within days.
Pro Customizable
Open ~/.tmux.conf to get started. You can customize keybindings, the bottom status bar, color schemes, the clock screen, your time zone, and more.
Pro Mouse support
Mouse support can optionally be enabled, allowing e.g. scrolling with the mouse wheel, or switching panes with mouse clicks.
Pro Only need to learn a few keyboard shortcuts and commands to make much headway
Cons
Con Requires latest version of Windows 10
Con Cannot have a mix of elevated and non elevated tabs
Con Unstable and buggy
Sometimes freezes and/or crashes.
Con Configured via (mostly) documented json
Con Slow
Con Doesn't have feature "Open Context Menu"
Poorly, this perfect terminal doesn't has this feature for Windows version.
Con Poorly designed key binding
Counter-intuitive keyboard shortcuts make tmux very hard to use and learn.
Con Bad scrolling support
Con No builtin telnet or serial support
It's considered bloat by the maintainers and for this reason there's no builtin support for them.