This has probably been asked, but I cannot find any topics discussing this for Slackware.

When I logon to Slackware via hyper-v, the text in the terminal and within text files is so much easier to read. The font is very different, the text is bigger, certain colours are much easier to read - especially any text remmed out in a config file. It also seems to me that the screen seems brighter? It might be because the background is not completely black.

On putty, the dark blue on black background is especially difficult to read, but everything looks smaller, duller, harder to read and poor contrasts.

I can change the colours, font and background in Putty. So I can fix this. The problem that I am encountering is that I cannot find any information on how to find out what fonts, colour scheme etc are being used in Slackware terminal so I can add the RGB settings to Putty. Also whether Slackware is using Cleartype, antialised etc.

I want if possible, to duplicate exactly what I see in Slacwkare Terminal as I like the fonts, colours and contrasts that I see in Slackware terminal. I connect remotely to these systems via vpn and ssh, so need to use Putty pretty much all the time.

Slackware does include a number of terminal programs including xterm, konsole and xfce-terminal. These are all usable by putty logins if you enable X11 forwarding in putty and install some X server like Xming.

Then there is also the text console you have before X is started and on different virtual consoles, is that what you mean by terminal?

The colors in the terminal are set by different applications. For ls the environment variable LS_COLORS is used which is set in /etc/profile.d/coreutils-dircolors.sh which takes the colors from the file /etc/DIR_COLORS

regards Henrik

Did you know that Windows 10 comes with OpenSSH client software? You don't have to use Putty any more... Just open a cmd prompt and type:

ssh user@192.168.x.x

et voila! The font it uses is Windows' Terminus (I think). It looks quite clean, and you'll get Slackware's colour scheme.

3 members found this post helpful.

Wow !

Thanks for that info rkelsen !!

dalacor --

Yes, the default putty fonts and colors can be ugly when putty is exeuted on some machines and I have never bothered to figure out why.

When it is ugly:

I execute `unalias ls` to eliminate the unreadable blue-on-black ls listings.

And in vim, I type: syn off

But some things still fall thru the cracks and I've got an ugly screen.

I just now tried rkilson's: ssh user@host

It works so I may be abandoning putty myself now

-- kjh

You'll also find that you can use password-less logins if you put your keys in:

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\.ssh

The linux subsystem in Windows is pretty capable... and unsettling.

Sorry to be so late in replying. Busy with other things. I am looking into it now.

I don't have X11 running on the systems in question. It's completely command based run level 3 (?) only. So terminal - I mean what you see before X11 would run.

I would say the main thing that I am looking to change is the colours and font type within text files. But definitely I want to see what font is being used by the terminal for listing directories as the text is much clearer and bigger using hyper-v than using putty.

Yes I did know about Windows terminal view. I tried that once a while ago. What I didn't like about it was the fact that you couldn't save profiles for each client and the keys were saved within windows. Putty makes it easy to save the keys, update the keys and to save profiles etc. But I think I will give Windows terminal other go because I have to admit Putty really is very poor with fonts, contrasts etc. I am spending a lot more time remoting into my Linux systems, and Putty just isn't doing it for me anymore.

My only concern about Windows Terminal vs Putty is security. I trust Putty to be more secure than Windows. But if it gives me the same fonts as logging in directly to Slackware, then I might go that way. Putty really needs to update their default colours and fonts.

Oh, do you only need to save the keys in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\.ssh as in copy and paste using explorer? So in theory, I could delete old keys and save the new ones there?

Ok, I will google how secure Windows terminal is compared to Putty and also see if Windows terminal looks the same for me as logging directly onto Slackware. If I am happy with the security and it looks the same, then I probably will abandon Putty. I don't understand why the developer of Putty has never addressed this issue. There are loads of websites complaining about the unreadable dark blue on black background, never mind all the other issues with readability and contrast. So you would think it would have been addressed by now as some websites complaining about this issue go back 15 years!

I will update when I have had a look at the security of Windows terminal.

rkelsen - do you mean Windows command prompt for ssh (as in cmd) or Windows terminal. They are not the same thing and I believe that command prompt is being gradually phased out of Windows to be replaced with Windows Terminal.

At a basic level,any terminal emulator program such as putty is just a dumb terminal, sending and receiving characters as bytes of data. The original ASCII character set (code 0-127) had some additional control characters - tab, carriage return, line feed, etc. - that were interpreted the same way by nearly all terminals.

In the "olden days", certain terminals were very common (e.g., the ubiquitous vt100), and had special sequences of control characters that would do special stuff such as screen positioning, etc. There was even an ANSI standard. As long as the computer you were connected to knew how to send control sequences to your terminal type, you got more control over screen display than just a dumb terminal. (I'm sure that 8 bits of data, giving a code range of 0-255, plus things like UTF character encoding and such make for a more complicated - and capable - exchange between a computer and terminal now.)

All of this is to say: the linux system needs to know something about the terminal emulation type if it wants to do anything fancy. The terminal program (putty, etc.) needs to behave like a terminal the linux system understands.

My current copy of putty on my Windows system says that it sends "PuTty" in response to ^E (under "Terminal", in configuration), and that its Terminal-type string is "xterm" (under Connection/Data).

To get putty and linux to coordinate better may be a case of getting putty to send terminal information that the linux system understands, and make sure that the linux system is configured to handle the correct terminal type. (No, I don't know how to accomplish that.)

dhalliwe --

Good Points !

I've had the best luck with Putty when I set Terminal->Keyboard->Function Keys and KeyPad and Connection->Data->Terminal-type String both to linux

Attached are Screen Shots ...

-- kjh

Attached Thumbnails

   

1 members found this post helpful.

No, I meant cmd, which is why I wrote that.

I do not use Windows Terminal and cannot give you any information about it. I'd suggest that if it can be used to run command line tools then the OpenSSH client should work.

It certainly works from within Powershell. By default, Powershell gives you a dark blue background, which makes it hard to read some of Slackware's default terminal colours.

There doesn't seem to be any indication from Microsoft that cmd.exe is going to be phased out. Quite frankly, there are still so many things that rely upon it included with Windows that I don't see how that could ever be the case. In fact, there is a blog entry from a Senior CLI program manager at Microsoft which says the opposite: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/comma...y-exaggerated/

It isn't clear to me why they're wasting energy developing this "Windows Terminal" app, when they already have Powershell... Maybe it is to appease the folk who believe that everything has to be an app? I wouldn't have thought those types of users would be the ones going anywhere near a command line, but anyhow what do I know? I'm just a guy who uses computers.

To use X terminal applications like xterm, konsole and others you do not need X running on the remote server. The only things needed on the remote server are installed applications and libraries.

However, your local machine will need a running X server like Xming, Cygwin/X or Hummingbird Exceed.

It might be confusing that the "X server" is running on the local machine. An X server serves display, keyboard and mouse to applications running on the local machine as well as other machines in the network.

Once you have an X server on your Windows machine you will not only be able to choose among a lot of different terminal programs, you will also be able to run other graphical programs like gimp or firefox.

regards Henrik

I have looked into the security aspect of Putty vs cmd/terminal/Powershell and from a Cyber Security point of view - no real difference. The keys are either in a folder using cmd/terminal or in the registry for Putty. As I am going to be using PassPhrases, this shouldn't really be an issue.

I have tested using cmd(never knew that cmd support ssh - you learn something new every day), as well as testing in Windows Terminal. Based on my research, I have abandoned the idea of using Putty in future. I tried changing the fonts, colours etc, but didn't come close to making it look as good as it does when accessing Linux directly.

Cmd - the font is so much clearer, bigger, easier to read. Great. Only drawback of command is that the remmed out text is still dark blue on black background. While it is far easier to read, it is not an optimal colour. Slackware defaults to showing the remmed out text in a nice cyan blue which is really easy to read. Some of the other colours are different as well. I can either download new a colour scheme or just change individual colours. So good. While much better to read than Putty, cmd does not show the same colours as Slackware - if you open text files - some of the colours are different.

Powershell - I didn't bother with. I agree the blue blackground does not work for me from a readability point of view and no obvious way to change colour scheme.

Windows Terminal - has a number of colour schemes and the option to download and install more colour schemes. So I am leaning towards Windows Terminal purely on the basis that it is really easy to change the colour scheme and you can use tabs etc. What I often do is use ssh and pscp - so great to have in separate tabs!

I consider this question solved as I am dropping Putty in favour of either cmd or Windows Terminal - once I have found my dream colour scheme. I have to admit the Slackware default scheme is perfect for me, but while the readability is considerably better in cmd or terminal - neither of them display exactly the same colours as Slackware default.