Mintty as a terminal for Bash on Ubuntu on Windows / WSL.

Overview

Run the installer to install

• wsltty package components (see below) in the user’s application folder (where WSL is also installed)
• an empty wsltty “home directory” to enable storage of a mintty config file
• Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts to start a WSL bash (with some variations, see below)
• optional context menu entries for Windows Explorer to start a WSL bash in the respective folder
• install/uninstall context menu items from Start Menu subfolder
• wsl*.bat scripts to invoke wsltty manually (with some variations and invocation options, see below)
• an uninstall script that can be invoked manually to remove shortcuts and context menu entries

Configuration

Command line scripts wsl*.bat

WSLtty installs the following scripts in its application folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty:

• wsl.bat to start a WSL bash in the current folder/directory
• wsl~.bat to start a WSL bash in the WSL user home
• wsl-l.bat to start a WSL login bash

To enable invocation of these scripts from WIN+R or from cmd.exe, copy them from %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty into %SYSTEMROOT%\System32, renaming them as desired. (The package does not do this to avoid trouble with missing admin privileges.)

Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts

The Start Menu subfolder WSLtty offers three shortcuts:

• WSL Bash % in Mintty to start a WSL bash in the Windows %USERPROFILE% home
• WSL Bash ~ in Mintty to start a WSL bash in the WSL user home
• WSL Bash -l in Mintty to start a WSL login bash

To ensure a login bash to start in your Linux home directory, add a cd command to your $HOME/.profile on Linux side.

Mintty settings

Mintty can maintain its configuration file in various locations, with the following precedence:

• file given with mintty option -c
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home\%USERNAME%\.minttyrc
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\home\%USERNAME%\.config\mintty\config
• %APPDATA%\mintty\config
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\wsltty\etc\minttyrc

Note that the %APPDATA%\mintty\config option provides the possibility to maintain common mintty settings for various installations (like wsltty, Cygwin, MinGW/msys, Git for Windows, MinEd for Windows).

Shell selection

To invoke your favourite shell, simply replace /bin/bash with its pathname in the Desktop shortcuts, wsl*.bat invocation scripts, or Explorer context menu commands (configured in config-context-menu.bat).

Components

For mintty, see the Mintty homepage, then Mintty manual page, and the Mintty Wiki, including a Hints and Tips page.

It is based on Cygwin and includes its runtime library (sources).

For interacting with WSL, it uses wslbridge.