Build 2019: Microsoft evolves its WSL and Command Line tools

Microsoft is launching a new command line interface for Windows users with the announcement of Windows Terminal at Build 2019. Windows terminal is, “a new application for Windows command-line users [that] will offer a user interface with emoji-rich fonts and graphics-processing-unit-accelerated text rendering.

It also will provide multiple tab support as well as theming and customization, allowing users to personalize their Terminal.”

In other words, it’s taking the currently existing command line tools of Windows like PowerShell and the regular old Command Prompt and bringing them to the year 2019. You’ll be getting things like theming and multiple tabs, which should help when running multiple commands. As you may have guessed, the Windows Terminal update is aimed at resolving some issues with Linux users, so Microsoft’s Subsystem for Linux will also be evolving around the same time.

Microsoft says that with the new updates to WSL “developers will experience up to twice as much speed for file-system heavy operations, such as Node Package Manager install […] and [support for] running Linux Docker containers.”

With these new additions to Windows 10, Microsoft’s WSL experience will become more powerful for developers. More importantly, it will feel even more familiar than it already does…

Both updates will firsr roll out to Windows Insiders from June.