Linux command line under Windows

Let me share my experience about setting up linux terminal under Windows.

Some time ago i worked on Mac OS and so accustomed to the unix command line that I can't live without it when i had switch to Windows. That's why i decided to setup linux console under Windows.

Main requirements was:

1. Linux terminal itself - i need to do my usual work using unix commands.

2. Terminal window should supports transparency (i like this feature on Mac's terminal)

3. Terminal window should supports tabs - this is a "must have" feature for terminal window

A natural choise for No. 1 is cygwin project. It gives you full power of linux console under Windows

but its default terminal window doesn't satisfy 2'nd and third conditions. Let's fix this!

cygwin contains an excellent termial emulator - mintty:

it supports transparency as well as other options:

Let's add tabs. There is an excellent free Windows application Window Tabs,

it allows to add tabs to any kind of application:

You can setup it so tabs will be shown only for mintty process. You can use mintty's Alt+F2 shortcut to open new tab and setup shortcut to switch beetween tabs. The only restriction of free version is - max tabs number in one windows set: 3. But is's enough for most of my needs.

Thanks for attention!