Help me make my windows cmd.exe console work more

Question

The windows terminal (the user-interface around text-applications like cmd.exe) really sucks.

There is so much that the Unix-style terminals do that the windows terminal apparently cannot do, for example what if you want to re-size the window in both dimensions by dragging the border. The Windows terminal only allows you to change it's length.

Cut & Paste, on Linux or Unix, no problem - the selection box wraps around nicely so you can cut multi-line expressions. The Windows terminal (even in Quick-Edit mode) forces a bizarre rectangular selection box which is of no practical use - you have to re-format everything you copy in notepad!

What about the fact that any time I go into 'edit' mode it blocks the application - I'm sure there are people who want to be able to cut & paste without stopping the business-critical server.

I'm sure we can think of more faults if we put our minds to it - but lets not grumble.. what can we do to make this better?

Update: Just to clarify, I'm not looking to replace cmd.exe - Powershell & CygWin both provide better alternatives. I'm trying to replace the console application, the GUI that surrounds all text-applications in Windows.

Answer 1

To change the size of the cmd prompt, you can either change the window size from the properties box, which will only resize the window itself, or/and you can change the buffer size, which will resize the ... how to describe it, the number of remembered lines. To access the properties toolbox, right click on the title bar and properties.

Also, if you want to quickly copy stuff from the cmd prompt, enable the "quick edit" box in the properties window - it will enable you to select stuff, and "copy" it with a right click.

Answer 2

I have not tried KDE on WIndows, but it is allegedly now available in the latest release at writing.

Answer 3

Instead of trying to force the Unix behaviour on Windows - which would be a bit unnatural - why don't you check out PowerShell, Microsoft's next generation shell for Windows?

Answer 4

There is a native windows version of rxvt that is available in Cygwin. It seems to work quite well and can be resized with ease, e.g. full screen.

Answer 5

IF YOU WANT A CYGWIN ALTERNATIVE

npm install -g cash-global

There is a well written blog about The Cash Shell .

You can also check out the npm package here.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Use Console 2, perhaps? It's really quite stable now, and allows you to switch between cmd/PowerShell/cygwin/any other shell very easily. If we're honest about it, it's not likely Microsoft are going to improve the native Win32 console any time soon.