Some colors not rendering properly in bash on windows?

Question

I'm using Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. I noticed that some colors are completely wrong.

Screenshot of result of running colortest-256 (colortest package):

You can notice that in system colors, there are several missing colors, the color cubes are completely off, and the grayscale ramp only has 3 shades. This is what I found running the colortest-256 is supposed to yield:

I've set my TERM to be xterm-256 colors. I'm using a clean install (fully removed linux subsystem and deleted the lxss folder and reinstalled) - is it a problem with my installation or does it not support the colours that are missing?

Answer 1

You are most likely running Anniversary Update which only supports 16 colors.

You can either upgrade to recent Windows 10 Insider builds, or wait for Windows 10 Creator Update due in spring 2017.

Then you can do this: 😀

Windows 10 Insiders Build #14931 introduced 24-bit color support in the Windows Console:

Answer 2

The simplest solution for me is to use wsltty: https://github.com/mintty/wsltty/releases It is the terminal of cygwin, adapted to run bash on Ubuntu on Windows instead.

You can also install an X server like Xming: https://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/ , and run a terminal in it. Might be too complicated if you don't need an X server.

Answer 3

They are already working on it.

https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windo/suggestions/13350690-256-color-support