When comparing mintty vs PromptPal, the Slant community recommends mintty for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for Windows?” mintty is ranked 9th while PromptPal is ranked 30th. 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.
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Pros
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.
Pro Tabbed UI makes the user's life easier
You can have PromptPal open automatically with the same tabs as used in the most recent session, starting in the same directories.
Pro Multiple shells supported
PromptPal supports several shells (including Powershell) and it allows you to choose which shell to run through the preferences.
Pro Persistent, editable command history
You can mark most used commands in PromptPal as favourites.
Cons
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.
Con Not free
Although there's a free trial available, PromptPal is not free to use.