53 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
53 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: The best terminal emulator for Windows 10's Bash or how to run X applications
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date: 2016-07-06 19:21:13
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tags: [windows]
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aliases:
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- /posts/2016/07/06/terminal-emulator-windows-10-bash.html
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- /posts/2016/07/06/terminal-emulator-windows-10-bash
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- /posts/2016/07/06/terminal-emulator-windows-10
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---
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**update as of 03/2017**
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As this article is by far the most popular on my site right now I feel that an update is necessary, as the landscape evolved a bit since the original publish date.
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[Conemu](https://conemu.github.io/) started to support Bash on Windows properly now and this is what I settled on in the end.
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The article below is still relevant for _the running X applications on Windows_ part though.
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---
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I've been playing a bit with
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[GNU/kWindows](https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/GNU-kWindows) a.k.a.
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Bash on Windows a.k.a Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta). I was
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especially interested whether I can use my regular Linux
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[dotfiles](https://github.com/cyplo/dotfiles/) to recreate my working
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environment of zsh + tmux + vim. The biggest troubles I had were with
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the terminal emulator. While the default one, invoked by saying **bash**
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is much better than powershell or cmd.exe already - it lacks some things
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I've learned to rely on, like 256-colour palette support. Thus the
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search for the ultimate terminal emulator begun. I tried **ConEmu**,
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**cmder** and their spinoffs to no avail. Either the colours were
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lacking, or the emulator would swallow up certain strokes like the arrow
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keys. Then I thought - hey, I use **terminator** on Linux, maybe it
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would be possible to use it here as well. To my surprise the answer was - yes !
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- install Windows Subsystem for Linux
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- restart Windows
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- install [VcXsrv](https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv)
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- run VcXsrv
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- invoke the following from the bash console:
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```
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sudo apt-get install terminator
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DISPLAY=:0 terminator -u
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```
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- profit !
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{{< figure src="/images/terminal-emulator-windows-10/capture.png" postition="center" >}}
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The font rendering is not ideal and the borderless mode does
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not work, but hey, it is quite usable nonetheless ! It even has
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bidirectional clipboard sharing with Windows' windows, which is good.
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P.S. konsole and gnome-terminal do seem to have troubles launching
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(crashy-crashes there)
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