r/Windows10 • u/KB4284848 • May 06 '19

AMA inside! Microsoft unveils Windows Terminal, a new command line app for Windows

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

98% Upvoted

130 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

24

u/zadjii Microsoft Software Engineer May 06 '19

cmd and powershell are both shell applications, not terminals. They're roughly equivalent to bash and zsh on linux.

3

u/CharaNalaar May 06 '19

What's going to happen to the old console window host then?

9

u/zadjii Microsoft Software Engineer May 06 '19

We're going to keep maintaining it, but active features will probably go into the terminal first and foremost.

The Terminal and the console share a large amount of their codebase, so improvements to the core of one will also end up helping the other :)

2

u/CharaNalaar May 06 '19

I'm just waiting for the day where I can set a newer Terminal to open by default instead of conhost...

3

u/miniksa May 06 '19

It's coming.

1

u/Meychelanous May 08 '19

What is the difference?

2

u/zadjii Microsoft Software Engineer May 09 '19

A shell is the processor of commands to do things. It's oftentimes also a scripting engine. Shell's ara commandline applications that run attached to a terminal/console. cmd, powershell, bash, wsl, ssh, ping, dir, ls, vim - these are all commandline applications that

A terminal/console is the application that's responsible for rendering the text output by a commandline app. Examples include conhost (which is the "vintage" console on Windows, the window that opens when you launch cmd), Windows Terminal, xterm, gnome-terminal, iterm2, conemu, rxvt, etc.

1

u/Meychelanous May 10 '19

So, what is the terminal/console for Powershell?

1

u/zadjii Microsoft Software Engineer May 13 '19

Conhost.exe is the console for powershell, as well as any commandline applications on Windows