Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#41

Post by badminton1 » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

I think "bash on Windows" is not a valid way of describing what it is.

Cygwin, which allows you to run bash among many things, has been available for TWENTY TWO YEARS now. However it required such software to be ported and recompiled specifically for its use with Cygwin.

The difference this time is being able to run unmodified Linux software on Windows, through an application binary interface called Windows Subsystem for Linux or WSL.

"Bash on Windows" is the least tech-savvy way to describe what is going on.

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#42

Post by IntelMiner » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:28 PM UTC

virtuexru wrote: post #32

Developing on Windows in 2017 LUL 4Head

4chan is back that way, friend

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#43

Post by midnitewarrior » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

Wow. This is a game changer.

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#44

Post by saboot » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

A basic thing, but glad they updated console to support more colors and basic vt sequences. Currently I just have X11 server on startup and through some scripting have a shortcut to launch an xfce4-terminal instead of the native console.

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#45

Post by nailer » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #40

OhSoHumble wrote: post #38

The biggest problem I have with the WSL is that it is intrinsically tied to stable Windows releases; there is no way to get incremental updates for Bash on Windows unless you subscribe to the Windows Insider program, which is a way of running prerelease versions of Windows. So in order to get Linux features like inotify working you have to sacrifice the stability of your operating system. This looks like it'll be tru…

Does anyone know the roadmap for WSL? My guess is that WSL itself is still unstable right now and later on it won't really need a lot of updates. On top of it, the Ubuntu userland should be freely upgradable - I think.

> My guess is that WSL itself is still unstable right now

Correct, it's currently a 'technology preview'.

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#46

Post by tornadoboy55 » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

OhSoHumble wrote: post #38

The biggest problem I have with the WSL is that it is intrinsically tied to stable Windows releases; there is no way to get incremental updates for Bash on Windows unless you subscribe to the Windows Insider program, which is a way of running prerelease versions of Windows. So in order to get Linux features like inotify working you have to sacrifice the stability of your operating system. This looks like it'll be tru…

Output from `bash --version` on macOS:

that's a 10yr old bash and there's barely any shell magic that you can do on Linux that won't work on macOS. And since by far most devs use macOS, most binaries support at least the macOS version of bash. All in all, no need to worry :p

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#47

Post by hashhar » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

0xFFC wrote: post #8

Philipp__ wrote: post #7

With Visual Studio Code, Microsoft is making Windows 10 really appealing to developers. I personally won't jump any time soon, I am really satisfied with my work environment on macOS (and Linux inside VM) (unless I got locked down into Microsoft stack for work, in that case I will gladly switch, but it's not like I will have any other option). But anyway, I recognize and appreciate the change at Microsoft's direction…

VCpkg (and ofcourse CMake support, without it I don't use VS honestly) made me to make that switch ! it is awesome, it is one thing as C++ dev I always dreamed of

VCpkg is so much better in my opinion than installing library devel packages on linux. Makes it a pain to keep track of them. Also the code completion and refactoring capabilities are itself worth it.

You can now also compile using the gcc toolchain if you have WSL installed.

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#48

Post by notheguyouthink » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

I'm still afraid to fully depend on this, and i'm sure i will be for years to come, but this is by far the most i've been interested in windows.

Who knows, in 3 years i might be able to ditch OSX for Windows, because some of the Surface devices actually look decent (no idea how true it is tho).

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#49

Post by oblio » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #23

wyldfire wrote: post #10

Not since Windows 2000 have I been so interested in an upgrade to a new Windows release. Only at work do I have to suffer through Windows, but this would make things much nicer there. I hope/pray that readline and/or editline work correctly on bash et al? Do Windows CI services like Appveyor support WSL? If so I would hope that deploying to windows for lots of high level software is relatively painless. Head scratche…

> Not since Windows 2000 have I been so interested in an upgrade to a new Windows release. Well, yeah, Windows has been in the dollar milking phase for quite some time now (at least a decade). It's no longer about delighting the user (yes, even Microsoft used to do that!). Or even just keeping them happy. It's just about keeping them not unhappy enough to switch to the alternatives.

I don't know about you but Windows 7 and now 10 have been quite solid for me, at least.

Windows 7 was a clear and undeniable update over XP and Vista while 10 refines a lot of Windows' weak spots (such as lack of virtual desktops).

Re: Bash and Windows Subsystem for Linux Demo [video]

#50

Post by inestyne » Tue, Feb 21, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

How is the file system performance going with this? The latest release version runs Rails worse than shared folders on VMWare which is slow in bad way. Running MySQL on top of it might "work" but is it fast?