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Is it possible to have anything other than bash in the popup terminal (Ctrl + Alt + M) provided by MobaXterm? I would like to have a local powershell instance attached to it. Even if I start a powershell local terminal in the main MobaXterm window, calling the popup terminal starts a bash session.

Thanks!

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wouldn't that be a MobaXterm config?

I don't use it, and know nothing about it. Yet, on OSX, the default term is bash, and I've changed that to default to PowerShell, but I had to do that in OSX.

Looking at a quick set of videos on Mobaxterm on YouTube, more directly shows me that it is Mobaxterm that must provide this hook, not anything from PowerShell natively.

Yet, the MS cross platform VSCode could also be an option for you as you will have PowerShell as the default and you can have as many other terminals open as you wish as well as switch between them interactively.

Integrated Terminal

In Visual Studio Code, you can open an integrated terminal, initially starting at the root of your workspace. This can be convenient as you don't have to switch windows or alter the state of an existing terminal to perform a quick command-line task.

To open the terminal:

• Use the Ctrl+` keyboard shortcut with the backtick character.

• Use the View Terminal menu command.

• From the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), use the View: Toggle Integrated Terminal command.

Windows

Correctly configuring your shell on Windows is a matter of locating the right executable and updating the setting. Below are a list of common shell executables and their default locations:

// Command Prompt
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe"
// PowerShell
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe"
// Git Bash
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe"
// Bash on Ubuntu (on Windows)
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe"

There is also the convenience command, Terminal: Select Default Shell that can be accessed through the Command Palette, which can detect and set this for you.

Managing multiple terminals

You can create multiple terminals open to different locations and easily navigate between them. Terminal instances can be added by clicking the plus icon on the top-right of the TERMINAL panel or by triggering the Ctrl+Shift+` command. This action creates another entry in the drop-down list that can be used to switch between them.

PowerShell Remoting is there for remote access to systems, and you can do this over SSH as well.

It's not the GUI approach of remote machine management like RDP or Mobaxterm of course. You could write your own GUI in VSCode / PowerShell for this RDP/Mobaxterm - like experience.

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  • Hi, yes, you can change the default terminal to Powershell in MobaXterm in the config. However this does not seem to change the 'popup terminal' (Ctrl + Alt + M). If I open the default local terminal in MobaXterm it is a Powershell instance, while the popup terminal still is bash. This is why I was puzzled. Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into VSCode, but I quite like MobaXterm...
    – ezatterin
    Apr 2, 2019 at 17:05
  • Understood. Looked at a few more YouTube vids on it. Thus my take it's like a combo of the MS RDP Manager and an embedded cmd.exe console. Kind'a cool. Yet I can pop an RDP GUI session in code just as easy in VSCode. Yet, PSRemoting is really about never needing a GUI for remote management. So, there's that.
    – postanote
    Apr 2, 2019 at 23:25

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