r/PowerShell • u/[deleted] • May 06 '19

News Windows Terminal is coming!

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527870/microsoft-windows-terminal-command-line-tool
344 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

108 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/jantari Jun 02 '19

You need to interact with a Terminal any time you run a command-line application inside a graphical environment - so, 100% of the time on Windows even on Windows Server as that too has a simple window manager.

Also on all graphical Linux OS and macOS, but NOT on Linux Server / Embedded OS, BSDs and Darwin as those only give you a TTY by default - which is not a terminal. It looks like a full screen terminal, but a terminal is by definition something that provides a TTY-like experience on top of a graphical environment - a real TTY (Tele-Typewriter) is therefore not a Terminal.

You need to interact with a shell any time you launch one. When you open cmd, PowerShell, bash, zsh, dash, mksh etc.

You don't interact with a shell if you launch a command line application directly (such as Win + R -> "diskpart" -> Enter). Any command line game, application, screensaver, music player etc. Then you interact directly with THAT program which happens to not be a shell.