Installing the Windows Terminal

00:00 Show us what’s even better than PowerShell. Right, well, this is Windows PowerShell. What’s better than Windows PowerShell is PowerShell Core, and I can actually start PowerShell Core from here, but there’s an even better program called Terminal, Windows Terminal. So there’s a couple things that happened here.

00:21 I’ve started PowerShell Core in a new program called the Terminal, the Windows Terminal. And if you’re on Windows 10, you won’t have this Terminal program.

00:31 What you can do is you go go to the Microsoft store—it’s very easy to install—

00:42 and then you can search for Terminal,

00:49 and then you’ll be able to see Windows Terminal. There’s a couple other ones, like Windows Terminal Preview, Fluent Terminal, but this is the standard one. I’ve already got it installed, but you can press the Install button to install that, and then you should get this new program called Terminal.

01:08 And the nice thing about this terminal is that you can actually start Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt, and even other shells in it. So it has a lot of flexibility, and you can have different shells in different tabs.

01:20 It’s really handy and has all these modern terminal features that you’ll find in Linux and Mac. So on Windows 10, you go to the Microsoft Store, and although it’s in the store, you can get it for free. It’s provided by the Microsoft Corporation, so it’s something that has a reputation, and on Windows 11—that’s the operating system that you are on right now? I’m on Windows 10.

01:47 Okay, gotcha. But on Windows 11, the Terminal program comes installed by default, so you won’t need to do this. I’ll also just mention that I’m on PowerShell Core here. You’ll see PowerShell 7.3.0.

02:01 Now this is the very latest version because I explicitly installed this. You may not have PowerShell Core. You may have Windows PowerShell. That’s fine.

02:09 As long as you’re on the Terminal program, which is what I recommend, you’ll be sort of in the latest environment. You won’t need any of the extra PowerShell Core things.

02:19 And if you don’t want to install anything, you can still get by with Windows PowerShell.

02:24 But if you’re on the Command Prompt, then you’re going to run into some very significant differences between what we show you and what you can do. Okay, and for this course, we’ll work with the Windows Terminal, so if you want to follow along tightly, then we recommend you get the Windows Terminal to your Windows system.

02:46 Yes.