At the Microsoft Build 2019 Developer Conference, the tech giant has announced Windows Terminal for users of command-line tools and shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and WSL.
Microsoft said that Windows Terminal is a new, modern, fast, efficient, powerful, and productive terminal application, which will be delivered through Microsoft Store in Windows 10.
The new service will come with a number of key features, including support for multiple tabs, beautiful text and fonts, settings and configuration options, and more.
The multiple tabs feature in Windows Terminal will allow users to open any number of tabs. All the tabs will be connected to a command-line shell or app, like Command Prompt, PowerShell, Ubuntu on WSL, etc.
“You’ve asked and we’ve listened! The most frequently requested feature for the Terminal is multiple tab support and we are SUPER excited to FINALLY be able to deliver this key feature,” wrote Microsoft in a blog post.
Windows Terminal will now use a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text rendering engine, rather than the previous Console’s GDI engine. This will display text characters, glyphs, and symbols available within the fonts on the users’ PC. These can include CJK ideograms, emoji, powerline symbols, icons, programming ligatures, etc.
“You will also have the option of using our new font! We wanted to create a fun, new, monospaced font to enhance the modern look and feel of the Terminal. Not only will this font include programming ligatures, but it will also be open sourced and have its own repository,” added Microsoft.
For users who like to customize the terminals and command-line apps, Microsoft has included a number of settings and configuration options to the Windows Terminal that will allow them to control the appearance of Terminal and shells.
Also read: Top 7 announcements at Microsoft Build 2019 Developer Conference
Along with the new Windows Terminal, Microsoft has also unveiled a new architecture for the Windows Subsystem for Linux—WSL 2. The updates will significantly improve the system performance, and enable full system call compatibility.
WSL 2 will power the Windows Subsystem for Linux to run ELF64 Linux binaries on Windows. The updates will change the way Linux binaries interact with Windows and the computer hardware.
Furthermore, it uses the latest in virtualization technology to run its Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility VM.
