Help me make my windows cmd.exe console work more like a Linux terminal

Question

The windows terminal (the user-interface around text-applications like cmd.exe) really sucks.

There is so much that the Unix-style terminals do that the windows terminal apparently cannot do, for example what if you want to re-size the window in both dimensions by dragging the border. The Windows terminal only allows you to change it's length.

Cut & Paste, on Linux or Unix, no problem - the selection box wraps around nicely so you can cut multi-line expressions. The Windows terminal (even in Quick-Edit mode) forces a bizarre rectangular selection box which is of no practical use - you have to re-format everything you copy in notepad!

What about the fact that any time I go into 'edit' mode it blocks the application - I'm sure there are people who want to be able to cut & paste without stopping the business-critical server.

I'm sure we can think of more faults if we put our minds to it - but lets not grumble.. what can we do to make this better?

Update: Just to clarify, I'm not looking to replace cmd.exe - Powershell & CygWin both provide better alternatives. I'm trying to replace the console application, the GUI that surrounds all text-applications in Windows.

Answer 1

I personally use Console2 with the Bash shipped with MYSYS-Git.

You can also use PuTTY and SSH to a real linux box ;-)