Windows Terminal hits the big 1.0: Fit for production? Microsoft celebrated this year's Build conference by emitting the first stable release of its new Windows Terminal and a getting-there incarnation of its handy set of PowerToys utilities. Both could easily be part of the core Windows build, but the fact they aren't (like Edge) means that the apps have enjoyed a rapid pace of …
Ok. I’m not a Windows person at all so I admit I might be missing something here. But...
MS are making a fuss about a terminal program? In 2020? That’s about, errr... 60 years after it was pretty much nailed on Unix and VMS and just about every other OS of any significance.
Wow!!!
:D I was being droll, of course; much as I hate Powershell it's great for sysadmin, when they've written cmdlets for the task at hand. If it's something that requires horrible WMIC commands and string parsing, I have been known to do it with Python in order to preserve my sanity.
To be fair they're replacing that bletcherous CMD.EXE, so it's hardly pointless. Seems quite nice although I don't have much call to use it (Windows lives in a VM).
As to Unix/Linux "nailing" the terminal, well there are still those tinkering trying to improve it - xterm hasn't entirely stood still since it was released, and my own favourite (kitty) does graphics inline.
Those Windows users (me included) who never use the Start Menu and instead run apps by hitting the Windows key and just typing....
Which is all fine and dandy if you can remember what the fucking programme is called. Fine for WORD, or EXCEL and others which have memorable names or are frequently used (In which case there'd be an icon anyway)
But a bit of a bugger when the software is little used and has a stupid name. At which point you start to to need a customisable start menu that makes it easy to group programmes according to function. ( Doable in Win 10, but not simple).
e.g. I have among other programmes; quick_any2icon.exe, three different pdf converters with similar names, Openshot video editor, Fairstars CD ripper, Freac,fsquirt, etc etc.
And there's no way I'd find many of these by remembering their names. But in my Start menu I have folders labelled for Office programmes/Video programmes/Utilities /Graphics/music and so on.
Which narrows down finding the stuff considerably.
Interesting,
For me moving the mouse to the start menu or pressing the Win Key are automatic actions. Scrolling down my list of programme folders almost equally so.
Or was, since the recent iteration of the Start Menu - which has presumably been redesigned by one of the same mind dead, cretinous, idiotic jellyfish who invented Win 8's "charms"*. Because it now exhibits similar stupid behaviour. Using it is like trying to grab a receding wave, as the list now suddenly vanishes from in front of you if you move a hair's breadth to the left.. May they suffer a thousand mosquito bites in their most sensitive body parts.
*or those of you spared that curse. The charms were Windows controls hidden in various areas of the screen, like some kind of computer game. When needed they could only be found by randomly clicking around in the areas where they were hidden until, like the Genie, they'd suddenly appear. More often than not though they'd randomly appear suddenly, poof our of nowhere and obscure what you were doing, because the mouse had accidentally touched the invisible magic lamp. May the designers' reproductive organs be nibbled by mice.
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm just going to leave how my Start menu program search behaves as I type in the word terminal here:
t: Snipping Tool
te: Microsoft Teams
ter: Windows Terminal
term: Windows Terminal
termi: Windows Terminal
termin: Windows Terminal
termina: Windows Terminal
terminal: Command Prompt
That's also assuming you can remember precisely what the programme is called, even if you do remember that you have to use this acronym. Fine if it's a programme you use often enough to remember it.
But not much help if you are trying to load "That thing I used to help sort out the server three months ago".
And at least that one has a name that describes what it does. many of mine don't or it comes later in the name.
There's a screen reader called "Balabolka" or some such name, (and I only recall that much because I just had a scan through my Start menu folders). Or there's "Greenshot" (my screenshot s/w of choice). Aabby Fine reader, .Belarc advisor, Reflect, VeraCrypt, Revo, Wise shutdown and so on.
How old is xterm? Let's see: Initial Release in 1984.
OK, I think I made my point.
> Could you fill us in as to what it is?
xterm is a UNIX terminal emulator, developed at MIT along with the X Window System in the early 1980's. It is also available on Linux, the BSD's, and other UNIX derivatives.
Mandatory quote of the times: Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!
It is kind of just like Windows Terminal, only it's been around for 36 years, has less bugs, and it's been mostly superseded by newer terminal emulator programs that got their inspiration from it.
Others have pointed to xterm.
I remember when my Windows colleagues were getting excited about 64bit Windows. We pointed out that we had been running 64bit Solaris for years. Then along came Linux and back to 32 bit at that point. Mind you the issues with applications getting confused with /lib and /lib64 was a right pain.
> [ ... ] applications getting confused with /lib and /lib64 was a right pain.
And the old Solaris link editor - /usr/ccs/bin/ld - didn't help at all. It would happily accept 32-bit library paths -- i.e. /lib or /usr/lib -- when linking 64-bit shared libraries or executables. It would also happily write those paths in RUNPATH | RPATH.
They finally deigned to fix it, but very late. For at least 12 years they insisted it was Not A Bug.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
