My Shell Config On Windows For 2021

If there's something I always liked in Linux is the shell! Windows has for too long been awful on that front.

Nowadays on Windows, there are several solutions: PowerShell, Linux Subsystem, Git Bash, Cygwin, etc.

For several years I was using cmder in combination with Git Bash.

But for 2021 I decided to switch to Alacritty github.com/alacritty/alacritty! And it's been great so far!

While cmder had GUI, tabs, and a lot of options, Alacritty is just straightforward and super performant.

To configure alacritty everything happens in its config file that you need to create yourself there: %APPDATA%/Roaming/alacritty/alacritty.yml.

For your reference is my alacritty config file:

selection:
  save_to_clipboard: true

shell:
  program: "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe"

save_to_clipboard is meant to activate the automatic copy in the clipboard of the text selection in the console window.

shell section is meant to define what shell to use in the console, and here I use Git Bash

If you want to use a modern font for your shell that has ligatures, check out: github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
Also if you want an easy way to install and uninstall software from the command line in Windows, check out chocolatey.org