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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

#141

Post by ygra »

tectec wrote: post #107
RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

What do they have to gain using the Linux kernel? As WSL shows running Linux userland applications on the Windows kernel is perfectly feasible, however, running Windows applications on a Linux kernel (aside from GPL nightmares) is a different story. The two architectures are quite different, but NT was built from the start to support different 'personalities' (cf. the OS/2 and POSIX subsystems).

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

#142

Post by llimllib »

Notre1 wrote: post #125
nailer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit for folks having trouble understanding: the post you're replying to literally mentions two of the best tabbed terminals for Windows. That's not the problem. A fast, inbuilt, 2017-era terminal is. - ConEmu has a UI that's a shotgun blast of shit. - Hyper still fails at basic shortcuts. - ConEmu plus other software still has a UI that's a shotgun blast of shit. - Some person's half maintained fork of putty is some…

Out of curiosity, what tabbed terminals on other platforms would you consider to be significantly better than ConEmu/Hyper? (I've never actually used any GUI platform other than Windows for any length of time, so I would be interested in seeing what other people do use.)

iterm2 is far and away the best I've ever used. https://iterm2.com/

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

#143

Post by teh_klev »

ygra wrote: post #102
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't cmd.exe the Windows terminal emulator?

No, conhost.exe is (since Vista, prior to that it was a part of csrss). cmd.exe is simply the default command-line shell. To disprove your guess here, you can just observe the processes existing when running console applications. There's one conhost for each console window, but unless you run cmd, there'll be no cmd instances. Windows didn't have a terminal emulator until recently anyway, as Windows console applicati…

> Windows didn't have a terminal emulator until recently anyway,

Well, actually....Hyperterminal :)

http://imgur.com/ukBjD7F

/gets coat.

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

#144

Post by filomeno »

RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

They want you not to install Linux, but keep using Windows. That way, apart from using their OS, you may end up using the rest of Microsoft software: Edge, Office, Outlook, OneDrive, etc. That wouldn't happen if you used Ubuntu.

What I don't understand is why Canonical thought that shrinking their user base would be good for their business.

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

#145

Post by internet2000 »

nailer wrote: post #75

Windows Console folk: any chance of tabs in the official terminal? Current Windows terminal options: - ConEmu: mainly excellent but a little dated - eg, the active tab color is hard to distinguish but it can't be changed, apparently due to maintainer's insistence it works on Windows XP. - Hyper: excellent but Ctrl C, Ctrl R etc broken in powershell. Adding tabs to the Windows console makes more sense than have a thir…

This is the biggest blocker, in my opinion. WSL is nice and all, but as long as cmd.exe/conhost.exe is the only official terminal, it'll never feel just right. If only they had an API so you could run Mintty without the wslbridge kludge.

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

#146

Post by ygra »

nailer wrote: post #112
nailer wrote: post #75

Windows Console folk: any chance of tabs in the official terminal? Current Windows terminal options: - ConEmu: mainly excellent but a little dated - eg, the active tab color is hard to distinguish but it can't be changed, apparently due to maintainer's insistence it works on Windows XP. - Hyper: excellent but Ctrl C, Ctrl R etc broken in powershell. Adding tabs to the Windows console makes more sense than have a thir…

Edit for folks having trouble understanding: the post you're replying to literally mentions two of the best tabbed terminals for Windows. That's not the problem. A fast, inbuilt, 2017-era terminal is. - ConEmu has a UI that's a shotgun blast of shit. - Hyper still fails at basic shortcuts. - ConEmu plus other software still has a UI that's a shotgun blast of shit. - Some person's half maintained fork of putty is some…

> a clean, fully featured tabbed terminal, included in Windows

You'd either get a Microsoft Word equivalent of a console window in that case, since everyone has a different set of features they consider essential, or the Notepad equivalent (more likely). A tool's value doesn't necessarily increase with more features and features are never cheap (in Windows, at least, where there are documentation, translation, configuration, group policy, and other concerns).

Tabbed console windows exist as 3rd-party applications already, seemingly with minor problems for one user or another, but I'd argue those problems are easier to rectify than for MS to develop yet another alternative that people grumble about even more because it doesn't contain their own personal pet feature.

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

#147

Post by badminton1 »

ghshephard wrote: post #134
badminton1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say bash, I am referring to GNU bash, the shell that has existed for decades now on Linux, BSD, macOS, Solaris and an endless list of other operating systems. I do not care if Microsoft couples their ABI and the shell and decides to call that "bash". GNU bash will continue to be what it has been for decades now. I also do not care if a lot of people want to take the entire GNU/Linux userland and decide to call…

Getting bash to run was a major milestone. Getting that application (which hooks into IO, process control, console output, devices, security, among many, many other things) is orders of magnitude more complex than getting something like awk running (and it still isn't 100% complete). I guess, from my perspective, the major deliverable for WSL was bash. You could have gotten hundreds of other subsystems in the LTP del…

There are many userland binaries that require far more system calls than bash. Take any general purpose programming language, like Python, Ruby or JavaScript on node as a simple example. Their libraries expose a lot of functionality that would finally translate into syscalls.

So no. I disagree that bash was a major final milestone.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

tectec wrote: post #107
RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by fulafel »

ygra wrote: post #141
tectec wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

What do they have to gain using the Linux kernel? As WSL shows running Linux userland applications on the Windows kernel is perfectly feasible, however, running Windows applications on a Linux kernel (aside from GPL nightmares) is a different story. The two architectures are quite different, but NT was built from the start to support different 'personalities' (cf. the OS/2 and POSIX subsystems).

Running Windows applications on a Linux kernel doesn't involve any GPL nightmares, what makes you think this?

MS already has a Windows subsystem for Linux (they are using it in the MSSQL Linux port).

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

#150

Post by ygra »

teh_klev wrote: post #143
ygra wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, conhost.exe is (since Vista, prior to that it was a part of csrss). cmd.exe is simply the default command-line shell. To disprove your guess here, you can just observe the processes existing when running console applications. There's one conhost for each console window, but unless you run cmd, there'll be no cmd instances. Windows didn't have a terminal emulator until recently anyway, as Windows console applicati…

> Windows didn't have a terminal emulator until recently anyway, Well, actually....Hyperterminal :) http://imgur.com/ukBjD7F /gets coat.

Oh, fair point. I forgot about that. But it was never intended to be used with local console application ;-) (and ANSI.SYS goes back even further, I guess).
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