Toward a more POSIX-Friendly PowerShell experience

I'm a MacOS and Debian user primarily, but my 9-5 is a Windows shop that requires I work from a Windows PC primarily due to security constraints. I also work in the public sector, which means that my hardware is slow and outdated because that's what our taxpayer-allotted budget provides for.

Being stuck on an underpowered laptop, I can't really run Windows Subsystem for Linux without taking a significant performance hit — especially when it comes to the ever-expanding size of the WSL virtual machine image that eats up my available disk space without constant pruning. I therefore have opted to forgo WSL and work directly in Windows, using PowerShell as my primary command-line environment.

As someone who spends a significant amount of time in Z shell (ZSH) working with coding agents, it can be fairly annoying having to "code switch" between my Mac and PC every day, especially when trying to get an agent to understand the different context. So, over the years, I have adopted these useful tricks to help add some parity between the Windows and POSIX (UNIX-compatible) experiences.

1. Install a better terminal app

Windows comes bundled with a PowerShell-specific terminal emulator, but it is non-customizable and frankly not worth your time. The fastest and easiest improvement you can make upfront is switching to Windows Terminal, which renders a bit slowly but is very customizable and far superior to most other terminal options.

If you're doing agentic coding, however, you may want to opt for an AI-integrated multiplexing shell. On the Mac, I use cmux for this. On the PC, Wave is the closest quality alternative I've found, which is my overall recommendation.

2. Install all the package managers

There are now three package managers available for Windows, each of which has its own strong suit and all of which are necessary to access the breadth of available Windows software across the web. None of these tools individually is sufficient, and therefore all three are required.

• Winget is Microsoft's official package manager for Windows which provides command-line access to install/uninstall products from the Microsoft Store and the Windows package registry.
• Chocolatey is a commercial package manager, predating Winget, with a community edition that offers access to loads of commercial and open-source Windows software with its own registry.
• Scoop is an open-source package manager that offers Windows-versions of popular cross-platform CLI and TUI tools.

3. Install Windows-friendly POSIX command-line utilities

These are, IMO, the absolute non-negotiables:

• cygwin – Windows ports of essential POSIX command-line utilities, like head, tail, wc, wget, and others we generally take for granted that simply do not exist in Windowsland.
• fzf – Fuzzy Finder is like a command-line version of Everything, an essential Windows search tool.
• gpg4win – GPG CLI and GUI tools for encryption/decryption and key signing commits.
• gsudo – sudo for Windows. One of the more annoying aspects of working in Windows is that if you're in a terminal shell and you need to run root-like commands, you need to reopen the terminal as an Administrator user or the command will fail. gsudo simplifies this process by allowing you to throw it in front of any command, which will then open it in an admin window. Microsoft recently added its own sudo command, which you can enable through the Developer settings pane, but I find that it works far less consistently than gsudo.
• git – If this isn't already installed, what are you even doing?
• Git GCM – A Git helper utility that manages authentication between Git and third-party repository hosts like GitHub.
• podman-desktop – Open-source Docker alternative. Even in choosing to forgo WSL as one's primary development environment, the ability to run Docker containers is still essential in today's day and age. I recommend installing Podman, the free alternative to Docker developed by RedHat, which will set up a small Linux machine image in which to run your Docker containers.
• psmux – tmux for PowerShell.
• ripgrep – A fancier version of grep commonly used by coding tools.

These are the coding frameworks you'll likely want to install, especially if you want to install any third-party utilities from their package ecosystems:

• golang – The Go language and compiler.
• nodejs-lts – The LTS version of Node.js.
• pnpm – The Performant Node Package Manager. Helps save disk space when working with Node packages.
• rust – The Rust language and compiler.
• uv – The best version manager for Python.

These are nice-to-haves to improve your user experience and make your shell a bit more comfortable to work with:

• atuin – The best shell history manager that ever was.
• cross-env – Allows you to execute commands consistently across Windows and POSIX environments. Especially useful when you want to pass environment variables to a command without having to go through PowerShell's more onerous syntax for setting variables.
• fnm – Fast Node Manager, a more performant Node version manager.
• fresh – A modern, user-friendly TUI code editor.
• lsd – A fancy dir replacement that you can alias to ls.
• starship – The only terminal prompt utility you'll ever need. Make your command-line prompt consistent no matter the OS.
• topgrade – All-in-one package updater. Works with choco, scoop, winget, and more.
• zoxide — Jump to frequently used directories with z [partial name].

You can install everything all at once from an admin shell window with:

scoop install cygwin fnm gsudo ripgrep rust wget zoxide && \
choco install fzf git golang gpg4win lsd nodejs-lts pnpm podman-desktop starship uv whois && \
winget install -e Atuinsh.Atuin sinelaw.fresh-editor Git.GCM marlocarlo.psmux && \
pnpm i -g cross-env

Be sure to add Cygwin's bin folder to your system paths, which will allow you to access its commands anywhere.

1. Open the Windows Environment Variables editor (available from System Properties or by searching from the taskbar).
2. Under User variables scroll down to Path and double-click it.
3. Click New and add C:\Users\[your_username]\scoop\persist\cygwin\root\bin\.
4. Press 'OK' and keep pressing 'OK' until all the windows are closed.

You may have to do this for additional folders, like PNPM's bin folder, if it's not done automatically during installation.

4. Install PowerShell modules

Now we're going to customize PowerShell itself to be a bit friendlier for POSIX users.

First, install PowerShellGet, which is yet another package manager, but this one is specific to PowerShell modules.

Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force; exit

Then install PSReadLine, which is a tool that makes it easier to manipulate the command-line.

Install-Module PSReadLine -Repository PSGallery -Scope CurrentUser -AllowPrerelease -Force

Then enable Winget.CommandNotFound, which will suggest the correct program or other programs to install when a command you've run is not found. It comes default with PowerShell 7.5+.

Enable-ExperimentalFeature PSFeedbackProvider
Enable-ExperimentalFeature PSCommandNotFoundSuggestion

Finally, install Terminal-Icons, which provides NerdFont support for icons within PowerShell.

Install-Module -Name Terminal-Icons -Repository PSGallery

5. Set up Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Now that everything's installed, we're going to tie it all together in a PowerShell configuration profile that loads the new utilities and maps keybindings to common POSIX shell patterns — like CTRL-A to go to the start of a line, CTRL-E to go the end, CTRL-U to erase it, etc.

Your PowerShell profile, if one already exists, can be in a number of places. However, the current profile, again if it exists, should be available in the $PROFILE environment variable. Try opening $PROFILE in your preferred code editor:

fresh $PROFILE

Then insert the following:

# Aliases
Set-Alias -Name "code" -Value "C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft VS Code\\bin\\code.cmd"
Set-Alias -Name "ls" -Value "lsd"
Set-Alias -Name "nvm" -Value "fnm"
Set-Alias -Name "docker" -Value "podman"

# Import modules
Import-Module 'gsudoModule'
Import-Module -Name Terminal-Icons
Import-Module -Name Microsoft.WinGet.CommandNotFound
Import-Module PSReadLine

# Setup PSReadLine for Unix/readline-style muscle memory
Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Emacs
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource HistoryAndPlugin
Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle InlineView
Set-PSReadLineOption -HistorySearchCursorMovesToEnd

# Core editing shortcuts
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+a' -Function BeginningOfLine
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+e' -Function EndOfLine
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+w' -Function BackwardKillWord
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+u' -Function BackwardKillLine
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+k' -Function KillLine
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+y' -Function Yank
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+l' -Function ClearScreen
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+d' -Function DeleteCharOrExit

# Word movement
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Alt+b' -Function BackwardWord
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Alt+f' -Function ForwardWord

# History
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+r' -Function ReverseSearchHistory
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Alt+.' -Function YankLastArg
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Alt+_' -Function YankLastArg

# Open the current command in the editor
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord 'Ctrl+x,Ctrl+e' -Function ViEditVisually

# Completion behavior
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function Complete
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key UpArrow -Function ScrollDisplayUpLine
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key DownArrow -Function ScrollDisplayDownLine

# Init third-party utils
Invoke-Expression (& { fnm env --use-on-cd | Out-String })
Invoke-Expression (& { zoxide init powershell | Out-String })
Invoke-Expression (& { atuin init powershell | Out-String })
Invoke-Expression (& { atuin gen-completions --shell powershell | Out-String })
Invoke-Expression (& { starship init powershell | Out-String })

Relaunch your terminal and give it a spin! Now you have POSIX-style commands, autocompletion, a searchable shell history, and more. It's definitely not a POSIX shell, nor is it a VM or an emulator. But it's close enough to stop you and your agents from entering incorrect commands over and over again, and to help you get your work done more quickly without bogging down your machine with needless VMs.

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Got any more tips for creating parity between PowerShell and POSIX for all the code-switchers out there? Leave a comment below!