— Terminal Emulator on Windows via Cygwin

How to install cygwin on windows circa 2011.

Install Cygwin from setup.exe

Install the following packages

• xorg-server (required, the Cygwin X Server)
• xinit (required, scripts for starting the X server: xinit, startx, startwin (and a shortcut on the Start Menu to run it), startxdmcp.bat )
• xorg-docs (optional, man pages)
• X-start-menu-icons (optional, adds shortcuts to X Clients and Server to the Start menu)
• mintty (windows-feel terminal)

Optional Packages

• openssh
• git, svn
• wget, curl
• rsync
• vim, emacs
• any additional fonts

~/.XDefaults

dark theme:

! terminal colors ---------
! tangoesque scheme
*background: #111111
*foreground: #babdb6
! Black (not tango) + DarkGrey
*color0:  #000000
*color8:  #555753
! DarkRed + Red
*color1:  #ff6565
*color9:  #ff8d8d
! DarkGreen + Green
*color2:  #93d44f
*color10: #c8e7a8
! DarkYellow + Yellow
*color3:  #eab93d
*color11: #ffc123
! DarkBlue + Blue
*color4:  #204a87
*color12: #3465a4
! DarkMangenta + Mangenta
*color5:  #ce5c00
*color13: #f57900
!DarkCyan + Cyan (both not tango)
*color6:  #89b6e2
*color14: #46a4ff
! LightGrey + White
*color7:  #cccccc
*color15: #ffffff

Some more themes on the Arch forums.

~/.bashrc

To enable color ls and human readable size format, add:

alias ls='ls -h --color=tty'

By default, the .bashrc in CygwinX has many options you can uncomment.

~/.emacs

Disable emacs temp (~) file pooping

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Result

Other emulators for Windows

• Terminator