Any way to stop VS packing up keys into a line on the Linux emulation?

I have a system running on Debian and I use termios to set it to read individual keystrokes. It works nicely for controlling a multithreaded system where I want to press one key and get a response.

However when using the VS2022 compile system the Linux console window appears to pre-package the keys into traditional 1970's style and I'm still having to <key><enter> to get a response. Yes, it's not a big deal as I'm only getting it when testing but it's still annoying. I haven't spotted a configuration option to make it pass over raw keys yet.

Can anybody suggest anything?

edit: not emulation. I am letting VS SSH into the system.