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kingToolbox/WindTerm: A professional cross-platform SSH/Sftp/Shell/Telnet/Serial terminal.

URL
https://github.com/kingToolbox/WindTerm

WindTerm

A Quicker and better SSH/Telnet/Serial/Shell/Sftp client for DevOps.

Hello WindTerm 🌹, hello world!

We're just beginning! If you want a high performance text editor, you can try WindEdit.

License

Completely FREE for commercial and non-commercial use without limitations. All released source codes (except thirdparty directory) are provided under the terms of Apache-2.0 license.

Introduction

See Intro Videos

Download

Linux binary, MacOS binary and Windows binary: https://github.com/kingToolbox/WindTerm/releases

Source Code

WindTerm is a partial open source project, and the source will be gradually opened.

Open source code includes, but is not limited to, the classes that can be used independently, such as functional, algorithms, gui widgets, etc., as well as functional libraries, such as network, protocols, etc., as well as all types that require open source according to the license.

Issues and feature requests

Any issues and feature requests are welcome.

Please click issues to commit an issue or a feature request.

Please click Discussion to discuss anything about SSH, SFtp, Shell(Linux shell, Windows cmd and powershell), Telnet, Serial and WindTerm.

Screenshots

Main Window (zsh):

image

Split views:

image

DigeWhite Theme:

image

Features

SSH, Telnet, Tcp, Shell, Serial

  • SSH v2, Telnet, Raw Tcp, Serial, Shell protocols implemented. Intro Video
  • Supports SSH auto execution when session authenticated.
  • Supports SSH ControlMaster.
  • Supports SSH ProxyCommand or ProxyJump. Intro Video
  • Supports SSH agent. Intro Video
  • Supports SSH auto login with password, public-key, keyboard-interactive, gssapi-with-mic. Intro Video
  • Supports X11 forwarding. Intro Video
  • Supports direct/local port forwarding, reverse/remote port forwarding and dynamic port forwarding. Intro Video
  • Supports XModem, YModem and ZModem. Intro Video
  • Integrated sftp, scp client, supports download, upload, remove, rename, make new file/directory and so on. Intro Video
  • Integrated local file manager, supports move to, copy to, copy from, remove, rename, make new file/directory and so on.
  • Supports Windows Cmd, PowerShell and Cmd, PowerShell as administrator.
  • Supports Linux bash, zsh, powershell core and so on.
  • Supports MacOS bash, zsh, powershell core and so on.

GUI

  • Supports Windows, MacOS and Linux.
  • Supports Multilingual User Interface.
  • Supports Unicode 13.
  • Session dialog and session tree. Intro Video
  • Auto Completion. Intro Video
  • Free Type Mode. Intro Video
  • Focus Mode. Intro Video
  • Sync Input. Intro Video
  • Enhanced protection of the session username and password. Intro Video
  • Command palette. Intro Video
  • Command sender. Intro Video
  • Explorer Pane. Intro Video
  • Shell Pane.
  • Quick Bar. Intro Video
  • Paste Dialog. Intro Video
  • Local and remote modes with vim keybindings. (Using Shift+Enter key to switch between remote and local mode) Intro Video
  • Supports time stamp, folding, outlining, split views.
  • Supports powerline in Linux and PowerShell, e.g. Oh-My-Zsh, Oh-My-Posh. Intro Image
  • Supports color schemes like vscode. Intro Video
  • Supports searching and previewing. Intro Video
  • Supports highlighting the opening and closing delimiter, such as (), [], {} and the customed delimiters. Intro Video
  • Supports changing the UI theme. Intro Video
  • Supports setting the tab color. Intro Video
  • Supports searching over the opened tabs. Intro Video
  • Supports closing tabs to the right.
  • Supports setting the windows transparency. Intro video
  • Supports select-to-copy, right-click-to-paste or middle-click-to-paste.
  • Supports searching text online with Google, Bing, Github, Stackoverflow, Wikipedia and DuckDuckGo. Intro video
  • Supports hiding mouse cursor while typing.
  • Supports locking screen. Intro video

Term

  • Supports vt100, vt220, vt340, vt420, vt520, xterm, xterm-256-colors.
  • Supports unicode, emojis, true-color, mouse protocol, etc.
  • Supports auto wrap mode. Intro Video
  • Protocols and terms can be customed.
  • All vttest tests have passed except Tektronix 4014.

Session

  • Supports HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy. Intro Video
  • Supports Jump Server proxy. Intro Video
  • Supports manual and automated session logging. Intro Video
  • Rename and duplicate session. Intro Video
  • Restore last sessions and layouts when restart. Intro Video
  • Supports opening a specific session or set of sessions on startup.

Performance

  • Dynamic memory compression, typically 20% to 90% of the working memory load can be reduced.
  • High performance, low memory, low latency. Intro Video

Sftp Performance

The hardware used for generating the data in these benchmarks was

windows 10 - 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 and 8GB memory.

WindTerm1.72, WindTerm 1.2, FileZilla 3.48.1, WinSCP 5.17.2 (Build 10278) tests are performed on WSL(Ubuntu 18.04.2).

The version of clients:

Application
Version
Release Date
windterm
v1.72
2020-10-25
windterm
v1.2
2020-06-15
FileZilla
v3.48.1
2020-05-19
WinScp
v5.17.2 (Build 10278)
2020-03-09

All test data is for reference only.

5GB huge file (5,154,830 KB), generated by random data

Download Time
Download Rate
Upload Time
Upload Rate
WindTerm 1.72 (Use high speed transfer)
23s
216.3 MB/s
20s
247.0 MB/s
WindTerm 1.72
23s
214.7 MB/s
20s
244.0 MB/s
WindTerm 1.2
37s
139.3 MB/s
43s
119.9 MB/s
FileZilla
32s
161.1 MB/s
30s
171.8 MB/s
WinSCP
81s
63.7 MB/s
91s
56.7 MB/s

4400 files, 16 folders (107,042 KB), unzipped from vim-7.4.1049.zip

Download Time
Download Rate
Upload Time
Upload Rate
WindTerm 1.7
26s
3.9 MB/s
13s
8.1 MB/s
WindTerm 1.2
32s
3.4 MB/s
10s
10.7 MB/s
FileZilla
48s
2.2 MB/s
35s
3.1 MB/s
WinSCP
42s
2.6 MB/s
12s
8.9 MB/s

Terminal Performance

The hardware used for generating the data in these benchmarks was

windows 10 - 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 and 8GB memory.
MacOs 10.13 - 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 and 8GB memory.

WindTerm 1.72, rxvt, putty, xterm, Windows Terminal tests are performed on WSL(Ubuntu 18.04.2).

Iterm2, kitty, Alacritty tests are performed on MacOS shell,

For WindTerm: No color scheme used in windterm. Color scheme will result in approximately 2% loss and more memory usage.

For Alacritty: Only supports up to 100,000 scrollback lines, so every test use "history: 100000" setting and no memory usage measured.

For Windows Terminal: Only supports up to 65,535 scrollback lines, so every test use "historySize: 65535" setting and no memory usage measured.

The version of terminals:

Application
Version
Release Date
windterm
v1.72
2020-10-25
rxvt-unicode
v9.2.2
2016-05-14
putty
v0.71
2019-03-16
xterm
v3.30
2017-06-20
iterm2
v3.3.6
2019-10-09
alacritty
v0.5.0
2020-07-21
kitty
v0.14.6
2019-09-25
Windows Terminal
v1.3.2651.0
2020-09-22

All test data is for reference only.

Test Command: "cat ./benchmark_randomdata"

The benchmark_randomdata contains 97.6MB random text (102,401,504 bytes, 1,329,878 lines, generated and tested by random_test.sh)

In all cases, three runs were made to warm system caches. The reported numbers are the median of five runs.

  1. Telnet:
Lines of scrollback
Data Rate(MB/sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
unlimited
52.1
106.6
rxvt
1,350,000
37.8
842.2
Putty
1,350,000
4.9
733.4
xterm
1,350,000
2.2
3328.4
Windows Terminal + telnet.exe
65,535
0.1
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting
  1. SSH:
Lines of scrollback
Data Rate(MB/sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
unlimited
41.8
108.5
rxvt
1,350,000
40.2
842.2
Putty
1,350,000
4.8
734.9
xterm
1,350,000
2.3
3328.4
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
65,535
2.1
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting
  1. Shell:
Lines of scrollback
Data Rate(MB/sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
iterm2
unlimited
- (Take too long time)
more than 1300
kitty
unlimited
17.2
2655
Alacritty
100,000
41.3
-

Test command: "time seq 1 n" (n = [1000000, 2000000, 5000000, 10000000], scrollback lines: unlimited)

n = 1,000,000

Time(sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
1.236
16.1
rxvt
5.082
633.3
putty
4.161
551.1
xterm
40.421
2500.7
iterm2
2.116
146.3
Kitty
2.535
2376.5
Alacritty
1.162
Not measured, use 100,000 scrollback lines setting
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
23.246
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting

n = 2,000,000

Time(sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
2.287
24.1
rxvt
10.896
1266.6
putty
16.045
1102.6
xterm
68.154
5005.5
iterm2
4.181
383.2
Kitty
5.620
4749.9
Alacritty
2.322
Not measured, use 100,000 scrollback lines setting
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
50.381
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting

n = 5,000,000

Time(sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
5.520
68.2
rxvt
27.533
3166.2
putty
45.911
2757.1
xterm
-
Out of memory
iterm2
10.805
1048.3
Kitty
-
Out of memory
Alacritty
5.799
Not measured, use 100,000 scrollback lines setting
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
130.371
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting

n = 10,000,000

Time(sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
10.674
133.3
rxvt
-
Out of memory
putty
-
Out of memory
xterm
-
Out of memory
iterm2
20.468
2231.3
Kitty
-
Out of memory
Alacritty
11.598
Not measured, use 100,000 scrollback lines setting
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
264.739
Not measured, use 65,535 scrollback lines setting

n = 10,000,000 scrollback = 30 Lines

Time(sec)
Memory Usage(MB)
WindTerm
10.167
0.7
rxvt
9.687
0.1
putty
95.382
0.4
xterm
286.510
0.1
iterm2
25.448
7.4
Kitty
16.104
0.5
Alacritty
11.798
Not measured, use zero scrollback lines setting
Windows Terminal + ssh.exe
261.096
Not measured, use zero scrollback lines setting

Linux Terminal Performance

The hardware used for generating the data in these benchmarks was

Debian 10 Vm - 4cpu and 4GB memory.

For WindTerm: No color scheme used in windterm. Color scheme will result in approximately 2% loss and more memory usage.

For other terminals: No memory usage measured because most of them write the history to disk or only support a limited number of lines in memory..

The version of terminals:

Application
Version
Release Date
Windterm
v1.9
2020-12-22
Gnome
v3.30.2
2018-10-22
Mate Terminal
v1.20.2
2019-02-11
Konsole
v18.04.0
2019-04-12
Xfce4 Terminal
v0.8.7.4
2018-5-15
QTerminal
v0.14.1
2019-01-26

All test data is for reference only.

Test Command: "cat ./benchmark_randomdata"

The benchmark_randomdata contains 97.6MB random text (102,401,504 bytes, 1,329,878 lines, generated and tested by random_test.sh)

In all cases, three runs were made to warm system caches. The reported numbers are the median of five runs.

Cost Time
WindTerm
1.976s
Gnome Terminal
9.781s
Mate Terminal
9.841s
Konsole
25.050s
xfce4 Terminal
10.520s
QTerminal
20.763s

Test command: "time seq 1 n" (n = [1000000, 2000000, 5000000, 10000000], scrollback lines: unlimited)

n
1,000,000
2,000,000
5,000,000
10,000,000
10,000,000(scrollback lines: 100)
WindTerm
0.846s (18.6MB)
1.574s (26.6MB)
4.046s (56.4MB)
8.232s (102.2MB)
7.748s (3.4MB)
Gnome Terminal
0.920s
2.152s
5.271s
11.111s
13.109s
Mate Terminal
0.822s
1.698s
5.943s
10.920s
12.290s
Konsole
1.612s
3.199s
8.157s
16.029s
15.650s
xfce4 Terminal
0.870s
2.160s
5.866s
12.089s
13.304s
QTerminal
9.272s
18.391s
45.999s
104.277s
17.208s

Latency

Considering the network influence on the latency, the following data is from WindEdit. DIGEdit is the text component of WindTerm.

Min
Max
Avg
SD
WindEdit
1.9
7.6
2.9
0.8
Windows Notepad
0.9
16.5
7.8
1.8
GVim
0.9
10.4
2.8
1.2

Shortcuts

Shortcut Keys List

Roadmap

Release cycle:

4-8 weeks.

Prerelease cycle:

1~2 weeks

Roadmap of v2.6 (Late-August, for reference only)

  • Resolve issues as much as possible
  • Improved Filer
  • Improved Transfer
  • Improved Quickbar
  • SSH Agent Forwaring
  • New memory allocator and manager and garbage collector (Postponed to a later version )
  • Command Snippet Description (Postponed to a later version )
  • SSH GSSAPI Authentication (Postponed to a later version )
  • SSH Agent (Postponed to a later version )
  • Search in sessions (Postponed to a later version )

Download: WindTerm 2.5.0 (2022-7-24)

Roadmap of version 2.x:

  • External tools
  • Protocols:
    • Mosh
    • Rlogin
  • Session:
    • Auto Complete
    • Chat mode
    • Log viewer
  • File transfer:
    • ftp, ftps
  • Script, macro and plugin stystem
  • More ...

Release Schedule:

Version
Level
Target
Status
Timeline
v0.x
Basic
Basic framework and basic features, but complete a high-performance text editor (WindEdit) as the base, and be able to use them normally.
Finished
Long long ago ~ Sprint of 2020
v1.x
Manual
Perfect features and can be used by most developers in their daily work
Finished
Spring of 2020 ~ Winter of 2020
v2.x
Semi automatic
Through triggers, macros, events, notifications and so on, developers can be assisted to complete some operations.
Developing
Spring of 2021 ~ Summer of 2022
v3.x
Fully automatic
Through plugins, scripts, machine learning and so on, automatically operating with achieving non-attended
Planning
Summer of 2022 ~ Winter of 2023

Acknowledgement

Contribution
EvoWebFrance
French translation
kvnklk
German translation
Lemonawa
Simplified Chinese translation
LuxNegra
French translation
MosamXu
Simplified Chinese translation
stephane.bio

Made with Notion, Published on Super - 2026 © Stephane Boghossian

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