Regarding "alternative shells" generally for Windows, you have always got Powershell, which I personally have never used much. As for alternatives to the cmd.exe console, I think I have tried all of the free ones like Cmder, ConEmu, etc, and always went back to the standard Windows console pretty quickly. There is an alternative-language thing called Take Command, which is supposed to fix all the things wrong with cmd.exe, but still be familiar syntax-wise. You have to pay for it, but there is a free version called TCC/LE (it used to be called 4NT and was around for years). It's like cmd.exe on steroids (111 commands compared to 40). Again, I noodled around with it but soon went back.
https://jpsoft.com/products/tcc-le.htmlTo me personally these alternatives are all very well if you like noodling around with consoles, but if you want to get anything done, cmd.exe is what most people use so I stick with that. There is one thing I have installed that I like, a console enhancement called Clink...
https://mridgers.github.io/clink/This is handy because it remembers your command history after a reboot, and you can do some custom things (e.g. coloured prompt). It injects itself into cmd.exe at launch, you can enable and disable it.
