Windows consoles: a small list
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/19
Many people confuse a shell with a console.
They are distinct: the shell executes commands, and the console hooks up video and keyboard to them.
Some products (like Take Command Console, of which Noah Coad is a huge fan) combine the two.
Some shells you can use for Windows:
- The default Windows console. Supports one tab per window. All others support multiple tabs per window.
- Take Command Console: hosting environment originally for Take Command Console, but also supports other
- Console 2 – Scott Hanselman was a huge fan – was a console for running various Windows shells including cmd.exe and PowerShell. Active Development ceased at the end of 2011 with Console-2.00b148-Beta.
- The English version of ConEmu started around 2009 (before that it was on a russian site, so few people knew about it), and also supports various Windows and non-Windows shells including cmd.exe, PowerShell, putty, CygWin and more.
It now reigns not because Console 2 stopped, but because it is much more versatile, configurable and integrates with both Clink and FAR Manager (a norton commander like console based file manager).
Scott Hanselman likes ConEmu just as much as I do, for instance because it has way better taskbar integration. - PowerShell ISE: IDE specifically for PowerShell. More graphical in nature than the other consoles.
One problem with all the shells and consoles: not all of them can be xcopy deployed which means that at some clients, you have to stap down to the built in tools that Windows ships with.
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
Leave a comment