Windows 10 WSL (bash) and mintty

I just installed the new Linux subsystem in Windows 10. It's really nice to have access to the Ubuntu repositories, but I absolutely HATE the default terminal program. Cygwin comes with MinTTY which is really nice and works very well, but I can't find a standalone package for MinTTY. Is there a way to make MinTTY as a default terminal for WSL, when launching whatever shortcut?

Edit: to be clear, I DON'T want to install Cygwin. I want to use the new Linux subsystem and its bash shell, but I want to use mintty as my terminal.

3 Answers

The mintty developer has just released an installer that will set it all up for you with no external dependencies (it includes cygwin dll, the console helper and wslbridge):

Download, install and you're done.

If you want to run a different shell than Bash, just change the shortcut (in your startmenu). For example, to run ssh-agent per terminal with zsh:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\bin\mintty.exe /bin/wslbridge -t /usr/bin/ssh-agent /bin/zsh -l

Using mintty + wslbridge works.

Download 3 files:

Put these files to the same directory named bin:

cygwin1.dll : cygwin-2.5.2-1.tar.xz
cygwin-console-helper.exe : cygwin-2.5.2-1.tar.xz
mintty.exe : mintty-2.4.2-0.tar.xz
wslbridge.exe : wslbridge-0.1.0-cygwin64.tar.gz
wslbridge-backend : wslbridge-0.1.0-cygwin64.tar.gz

And create an empty minttyrc.

Run mintty -c ./minttryc ./wslbridge

Or use Terminal emulator for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Original thread.

Here's how to do it, run mintty under bash.

1. Download mintty from here.

2. Unzip and Extract mintty.exe

3. Go to your bin folder where you installed Git. The default location is : C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin

4. Right click on windows shortcut for Git Bash

5. Set target to :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\mintty.exe" /bin/sh --login -i

If download location is different, then change the location accordingly.

6. Click on Git Bash shortcut to launch it.