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Add to SafariWhen comparing Console2 vs mintty, the Slant community recommends mintty for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for Windows?” mintty is ranked 9th while Console2 is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose mintty is:
Mintty is a native Windows wrapper around Cygwin but with added customization features like changing background color, font, transparency, etc.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Customizable aesthetics
Console2 comes with multiple window styles out of the box and allows the user to configure fonts, colors, and transparency to their liking.
Pro Easy-to-use text selection
Console2's text selection is intuitive and easy to use.
Pro Highly configurable hotkeys
Hotkeys allow the user to easily trigger an action and can be configured to their liking.
Pro Borderless mode minimizes crashes
Borderless windowed mode is basically a fullscreen mode but with a super fast alt tab option and seamless task switching without the risk of crashes or freezes.
Pro Transparency support
Console2 supports transparency. You can adjust how transparent the background should be.
Pro Dynamically resize window
You can change the width and height of the console window without having to reset your session.
Pro Supports fullscreen mode
Console2 supports fullscreen mode, making for greater visibility.
Pro Can run any existing shell
Console2 facilitates the running of CMD, PowerShell, Cygwin, PuTTY, etc.
Pro Free and open source
Console2 is licensed under MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1, making it free and open source.
Pro Tabbed
Console2 allows the user to create tabs for separate instances of the terminal, allowing them to have both multiple shells and multiple instances of the same shell open.
Pro Support for Cygwin and MSYS
Mintty is a native Windows wrapper around Cygwin but with added customization features like changing background color, font, transparency, etc.
Pro Proper support for scrolling in terminal applications
The mouse wheel in mintty actually scrolls the content in man/less/vim, etc.
Pro Xterm-compatible terminal emulation
Xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System.
Pro UTF-8 support
UTF-8 allows for the encoding of all possible characters.
Pro Drag and drop makes for ease of use
The drag and drop function in mintty allows the user to move an item quickly and easily.
Cons
Con Not maintained
The development of Console2 has been abandoned. The latest change was made in 2013.
Con Stopping a script closes the tab
Usually when a script is running and you try to stop it with Ctrl-c, it stops and shows the empty command prompt waiting to get a new command. In Console2 this does not happen: instead the whole tab where the script is running is closed.
Con No multiple tab support
Con Win32 console API performs poorly
Classic Windows console applications don't work well.
Con No native support for WSL
Cygwin is dead. WSL is amazing, yet Mintty is designed around Cygwin and the WSLtty app to connect Mintty to WSL feels like a hack.
