Tabbed terminals for Windows redux

As I’ve written about here before, I’m always on the lookout for a good tabbed terminal for Windows that I can use to run multiple cygwin/bash shells locally. Running Screen in my Rxvt or alt-tabbing between 8 terminal windows just doesn’t cut the mustard.

On Linux and FreeBSD I use Konsole or Gnome-Terminal, on Mac OSX I use ITerm, and on straight up Windows there’s nothing! I’ve come to realize that the only way I’m getting a tabbed term under Windows is running XFree86 which has opened up these possibilities for me that work:

1. Mrxvt builds under Cygwin or if you’re lazy like I am you can just download mrxvt.exe here and drop it in your Cygwin path. Thanks for the tip Naresh!
2. Konsole running under KDE-Cygwin is another option but carries with it the footprint of all the other KDE services that need to run. As I discovered the hard way it requires you have all of your Cygwin filesystems mounted in binmode.
3. Gnome-terminal took the most digging to figure out how to get it to work under Cygwin but I finally came across this post. Start Cygwin’s setup.exe, select install from internet, paste in this URL ftp://sunsite.dk/projects/cygwinports/ and click add, hit next, and then select gnome-terminal from the package list and off you go.

These three solutions do the trick for me but, I just wish I didn’t have to run XFree86 to get the benefit. That’s what I really liked about the native Windows port of Rxvt under Cygwin, it’s a great terminal emulator and it doesn’t require XFree86 to run!