Konsole vs mintty
Konsole
konsole.kde.orgmintty
mintty.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | Konsole | mintty |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal apps | 8.7 (#4) | 7.9 (#27) |
| Spec score · Terminal Emulators | 8.5 (#9) | 8.2 (#17) |
| Downloads | The KDE Applications page offers Linux installation through application stores or a distribution package manager, and links to Windows and macOS platform pages. | The homepage links to the source repository, latest releases, a release archive, and a current snapshot download. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The handbook documents a D-Bus interface for controlling Konsole windows and sessions. | Mintty is installed as the default Cygwin Terminal, comes with MSYS2, and is installed by default in Git for Windows as Git Bash. |
| Purpose | Konsole runs a command shell and provides a command-line interface for directly controlling a computer. | Mintty is a terminal emulator for Cygwin, MSYS, MSYS2, derived projects, and WSL. |
| Scripting API | Yes | Yes |
| Split panes | Yes | No |
| SSH support | Yes | No |
| Support | The page links to the Konsole Handbook, KDE Forum, bug reporting, and a developer mailing list. | The project directs bug reports and enhancement suggestions to its GitHub issue tracker and general Cygwin questions to the Cygwin mailing list. |
| Supported platforms | Linux,Windows,macOS | Windows |
Plans
In their own words
Konsole
Konsole is a terminal emulator for running a command shell and controlling a computer through a text-based command line. It is listed for Linux, Windows, and macOS and is free and open source under GPL-2.0+. Tabs and multiple profiles organize sessions; profiles can also automate common commands, including SSH connections to another machine. A tab can be split into left-right or top-bottom views, and its layout can be saved to a file. Konsole supports bookmarks, searching, and saving output or scrollback as a text or HTML file. Monitoring can notify users about silence, activity, a shell prompt, or a finished process. With shell integration enabled, it distinguishes prompts, input, and output and provides visual hints for commands that resulted in errors. A D-Bus interface allows software to control Konsole windows and sessions. Linux installation options include application stores, distribution package managers, and Flathub. The project links to Windows and macOS platform pages, including nightly installers for Windows and macOS ARM and Intel; those builds are intended for testing and come from the latest development branch.
mintty
mintty is a free Windows terminal emulator for Cygwin, MSYS, MSYS2, related projects, and WSL. It provides xterm-compatible emulation and DEC terminal screen controls, with 256 colours, True Colour, Unicode, bidirectional text, emoji, Arabic shaping, image display, Sixel, ReGIS, and Tektronix 4014 graphics emulation. Input features include configurable shortcuts, Unicode composition, AltGr, Windows IME, mouse modes, selection, copy and paste, drag and drop, and Ctrl-click opening of files or URLs. Window features include virtual tabs, session switching, fullscreen, transparency, multiple monitors, and high DPI. Options can be supplied on the command line or in a text configuration file, without registry entries. mintty is the default Cygwin Terminal, installed by default in MSYS2, included with Git for Windows as Git Bash, and able to host WSL. It omits PuTTY networking functionality; the project points to OpenSSH and inetutils packages instead. The listed latest release is 3.8.3.