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What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

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Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#41

Post by pmontra »

laumars wrote: post #20
aerovistae wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft adds this amazing set of features and the only response you have is "your name is insulting the people you're trying to appeal to"? "Trying"? As if they're failing? Do you know how much people love this project?

A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. Microsoft have done a lot over the years to troll the Linux community. While many of the younger HN members will be familiar with the "new open source Microsoft" some of us oldies have had to endure IE breaking the web plus ActiveX / Silverlight and other MS web lockins. Comments like "open source is communism" from top…

I also remember the standardization process of OOXML.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open...

I also think their current strategy could be the one you describe. We're at the Embrace phase. It's not sure that Extend will follow but I wonder what it could look like. Maybe it will be something convenient you can do in Linux only if you're running it inside WSL. Given how Linux is used it should be something server side, Internet facing (no Active Directory, Exchange, SQL Server, those are Windows markets anyway). A bonus would be some compatibility tool to do that on native Linux too. If enough software is written to run for Linux+WSL and it gets deployed in production, then the Estinguish phase will be ready to kick in: deprecate the compatibility tool and hijack all the Linux market to Windows. The timescale for playing out these strategies is at least 10 years, so let's talk about it when approaching 2030.

If Microsoft is really thinking along those lines, a way it could fail is if Linux expands to other markets. That would make it hard to Extend to most of the use cases.

However what WSL is doing it to make those MacOS users that deploy to Linux consider moving back to Windows because there is a Linux subsystem there too. Actually, a real Linux instead of a look alike.

By the way: why did they named it Windows Subsystem for Linux instead of Linux Subsystem for Windows? It's Linux running inside Windows, not the other way around.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#42

Post by laumars »

barrkel wrote: post #25
laumars wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entry point to WSL is bash and while you may be able to compile and install other shells, calling it "bash" isn't too far from the truth. Really the awkwardness of the naming is more of a testament to the power of scripting on Unix-like OSs (eg how scripting is a first class citizen and how most of the ecosystem is modelled around CLI, and thus scripting, support) more than it is an insult. As for cygwin, that w…

Cygwin isn't terrible; it's much better than mingw for the simple reason that it provides an environment much closer to POSIX. Its biggest problem is forking speed. I don't think it has a second big problem; the next biggest is the crashes you get if you do partial updates and don't rebaseall. Cygwin enabled me to stick with Windows since 2003 or so, and have the same environment on Windows, Linux and OS X. The comma…

Opinions are bound to differ so I do appreciate your point. I personally found Cygwin a nightmare to install, a nightmare to maintain, and a crash prone on every system I used it on since XP. While you're right that MinGW is only a subset, it did address the issues I raised with Cygwin which made it a better default environment for me most of the time; falling back to Cygwin on those occasions MinGW couldn't fulfil. But frankly I generally try to avoid Windows where-ever possible so it's possible you have more experience with Cygwin than I.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#43

Post by dmoo »

cel1ne wrote: post #29
NickGerleman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely had issues doing an upgrade on a real Ubuntu installation. Years ago I needed to update a more or less clean install of Ubuntu Desktop. It managed to completely break Gnome somehow (This was before Unity). I'm guessing things are better now and that the server distribution is better for this but I could see complications happening.

I used Ubuntu Server LTS a couple of times. The 14.04 version which is supported until 2019 still has the bug that it won't clear out old kernels after upgrading them. So if you don't look into your /boot partition now and then it fills up and breaks your installation.

I'm sure you know but apt-get autoremove

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#45

Post by sohkamyung »

dewitt wrote: post #23

But did they fix ctrl-space? [1] As an emacs user, this single issue has been the show-stopper that prevented me from investing in bash on windows, even though I would like to. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/1088250/windows-10-linux-bas...

This looks like it has been fixed [1]

[1] https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/583

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#48

Post by Longhanks »

ldev wrote: post #39
fragmede wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking why Microsoft's advice is to format and reinstall, well, consider who it's coming from.

Because you can upgrade from windows 3.11 all the way to 10, good luck with ubuntu. Yeah, I see your point.

This is more like 7 -> 10 (14.04 is LTS predecessor to 16.04). Totally valid upgrade path.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#49

Post by badminton1 »

laumars wrote: post #20
aerovistae wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft adds this amazing set of features and the only response you have is "your name is insulting the people you're trying to appeal to"? "Trying"? As if they're failing? Do you know how much people love this project?

A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. Microsoft have done a lot over the years to troll the Linux community. While many of the younger HN members will be familiar with the "new open source Microsoft" some of us oldies have had to endure IE breaking the web plus ActiveX / Silverlight and other MS web lockins. Comments like "open source is communism" from top…

My remarks were directed at the product being discussed ("Bash on Windows"), a name that I think is incorrect for objective reasons.

You can agree or disagree, but the comment was technical in nature, not trolling.

People do not use "Bash on Windows" just for the sake of using Bash (the shell), they use it to access GNU/Linux software through the WSL ABI.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#50

Post by skynode »

NickGerleman wrote: post #24
finchisko wrote: post #17

>Upgrade In-Place ...though this may not result in an optimal instance. Wondering why such a disclaimer? Ubuntu apt upgrades are reliable. Or is it related to WSL? Anyway good job WSL team.

I've definitely had issues doing an upgrade on a real Ubuntu installation. Years ago I needed to update a more or less clean install of Ubuntu Desktop. It managed to completely break Gnome somehow (This was before Unity). I'm guessing things are better now and that the server distribution is better for this but I could see complications happening.

I've had this problem many times in the past too. Including subsequent problems with dpkg after the upgrade to 16.04
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