
Recently I happened to use Windows to do some cross browser testing (no prizes for guessing the browser). It's  been a long time since I used Windows and Ubuntu has become my primary OS then. And, when I was a windows user, I never cared about its command prompt. Mainly because I never had anything to do in the command line.

But things have changed, thanks to Git. Now, the command line has become an inseparable tool in my dev life. Ubuntu has console which is quite effective to work with. But, Windows command prompt is never programmer-friendly.

For an example - have you ever tried to copy & paste text in command prompt? If you'd, you know its PITA. So, I was eagerly searching for an command prompt alternative just because of this one reason.

Thanks to [Console2][1], I found one.

[1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ "Console2 - command prompt alternative"

[![][3]][3]

[]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

Here's why I like this little tool:

1.  Copying is now really simple: **Shift Left click **and **drag **to select text and copy. You can even enable the option to auto copy when you select the text.
2.  Pasting is *dead *simple - just **middle click**.
3.  Support for tabs - you can have multiple console tabs inside single window.
4.  Ability to set 'startup directory' and configure shortcut keys.

Now this Console2 has completely replaced the Windows command prompt & Power shell. If you are in Windows, try this - you won't regret.


Console2 - an alternative to Windows command prompt


Here's a small UNIX tip (or how-to) for executing a command in the background. For UNIX gurus, this tip might seem like a basic one. But for guys like me who are coming from a Windows background, even smaller ones makes a big difference.

This is the scenario - I use Putty to login to UNIX. I execute few (internal) UNIX commands which are time thirtsy and take at least 2 hours to complete. While the command is running, I can't do anything in the Putty terminal. All I can do is stare the Putty for 2 hours or do the below, to reuse the Putty session for other tasks while running the time-thirsty command in the background.

- In UNIX shell, type your command and hit Enter.
  $ my-long-running-command
  ...... the long-running command running .....

- Your command will start running. Now press `Ctrl z`. This will interrupt the current process and pauses it. You'll see something like this;
  [1] Stopped my-long-running-command

- Now , type `bg` and hit Enter. Your current process (i.e. the command) will start running in the background. To check, type `jobs` in the command line and hit Enter. You'll see the job status something like this.
  $ bg
  [1] my-long-running-command
  $jobs
  [1]- Running my-long-running-command

So, now you can use Putty for other tasks, while your command executes in the background.


#command (2)