Preface

Windows Terminal is a modern and open source command-line program for Windows 10, built for Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), and more. It's fast and flexible, but to use it effectively we need to understand both Windows Terminal and the shells that run inside it. We'll explore these technologies in detail throughout the three sections of this book.

We'll start by covering the benefits of Windows Terminal, including its GPU-accelerated rendering and JSON-based configurability. We'll learn how to use and customize the built-in tabs, panes, and key bindings to drive our own beautiful and efficient terminal workflows.

Next, we'll show how to use PowerShell Core and the Windows Subsystem for Linux within Windows Terminal. We'll maximize our productivity using powerful tools such as PSReadLine on PowerShell and ZSH on Linux, and pick up some time-saving tricks for common developer tools such as Git and SSH.

Finally, we'll see how Windows Terminal can be used in common development and DevOps tasks, such as developing frontend JavaScript applications and backend REST APIs and controlling Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud.

By the end of this book, we'll not only be experts on Windows Terminal, but we'll also know how to use shells such as PowerShell Core and ZSH to become proficient through the command line.