What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by m_fayer » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #160

m_fayer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a free or nearly free "developer edition" of Windows 10 incoming. It won't have some of the enterprise-y features (bloat) of existing enterprise editions, but it will be capable, feature-rich, free (maybe you'll have to somehow demonstrate that you're a developer) - and most importantly it will be free of the creepy shit. And then they'll be well positioned to drink Apple's milkshake, as far as developer-mindsh…

>it will be free of the creepy shit That's far too optimistic.

Why? Developers are a small minority of MS's users, and MS gains way more in terms of adoption and opinion-shaping from being on the good side of devs than they gain from the (unusual, unrepresentative) data that comes from spying on them.

And since devs tend to overlook how "civilians" experience computing, (when's the last time you turned off your ad blocker?) if devs receive a non-creepy version of Windows, that'll be that many fewer influential people trying to hold MS's feet to the fire wrt privacy.

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

#192

Post by dman » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

Please disable file notified hooks for files in WSL. One of the big reasons why I prefer to work on linux in office like environments is because Symantec etc heavily hook file IO on windows making things like compilation / checkout very slow compared to linux. When WSL came out I was hoping it would sidestep the slow hooked IO problem in windows but some investigation revealed that file modified / created hooks are still triggered for files in WSL. Any change of this being removed?

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

#193

Post by mwfunk » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #192

Please disable file notified hooks for files in WSL. One of the big reasons why I prefer to work on linux in office like environments is because Symantec etc heavily hook file IO on windows making things like compilation / checkout very slow compared to linux. When WSL came out I was hoping it would sidestep the slow hooked IO problem in windows but some investigation revealed that file modified / created hooks are s…

The problem is the antivirus software, not the kernel features that the AV software is using. I can't imagine that MS would cripple their OS just so that someone who mostly uses WSL can bypass the AV software that their sadistic IT people force them to use. The only solution there is to just not take jobs where someone can force you to use such machines.

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

#194

Post by pcwalton » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

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…

I just use the XFCE terminal connected to VcXsrv in WSL. :)

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

#195

Post by tolger » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #157

ygra wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, config…

> A tool's value doesn't necessarily increase with more features and features are never cheap What I mean when I write 'clean and fully featured' is: a console, tabs, a nice scroll buffer, working escape sequences, suppressing the bell. That's about it. This is 1000x less features than ConEmu - I don't care about a new exciting way to set terminal variables, or integration with a file manager nobody uses, or support…

I'm with nailer on this. All I need is a decent built-in console with tabs and good support for bash, powershell and cmd.

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

#196

Post by sratner » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

tofflos wrote: post #166

Windows Console question here! :) Are there any plans to support GNU Readline shortcuts such as history searching with Ctrl-R directly in the Windows Console? I'm mostly using WSL to run the PostgreSQL CLI with the standard keyboard behavior. It would be nice to be able to do that without having to install WSL.

In the meantime, clink (https://github.com/mridgers/clink) works well. It stays out of your way, and isn't clunky like the full shell replacements. I had even forgotten that cmd.exe doesn't do ctrl-r out of the box.

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

#197

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:27 PM UTC

funkymike wrote: post #181

aruggirello wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long run, Canonical might have been the trojan horse Microsoft needed to demolish Linux from within . As developers, we're all enthusiasts of the WSL and how we don't need to dual boot, run VMs etc. any more. But in the process, we may end up giving less love to our once beloved DEs. This in turn creates a negative feedback for Linux desktop adoption. Also, less bare-metal installs means less bugs discovered a…

This can go the other way as well. If developers can target WSL and run on both Linux and Windows it increases their user base. This could end up making it easier for users to move away from Windows since one of the big hurdles is software compatibility.

If it is a Trojan horse, it does seem to be a partnered one that works both ways. WSL is the easiest "Hey Developers, Try Ubuntu" experience Canonical could hope for. No virtual machines to wrestle, no boot CDs to awkwardly try to boot on machines that no longer have CD-ROMs: push a couple buttons, install an app.

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

#198

Post by hotsauceror » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:28 PM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #140

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…

I really support ConsoleZ. The UI is sadly still a little bulky, but you can do a good bit of configuration for hotkeys. The tabbing is nice, and it also to my memory has panes, without ConEmu's weird hidden tab system for them. It has the added benefit of you being able to pick the terminal to spin up, and whether you want Administrator mode or not, on every new tab, so you can be working in a bash tab and pop a new…

I second this. I use ConsoleZ daily as my main shell for cmd and for powershell. It does everything I need it to do, I can dial down the UI to the absolute bare minimum, it's fast and responsive, and it's highly customizable.

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

#199

Post by ComodoHacker » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

m_fayer wrote: post #191

ComodoHacker wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it will be free of the creepy shit That's far too optimistic.

Why? Developers are a small minority of MS's users, and MS gains way more in terms of adoption and opinion-shaping from being on the good side of devs than they gain from the (unusual, unrepresentative) data that comes from spying on them. And since devs tend to overlook how "civilians" experience computing, (when's the last time you turned off your ad blocker?) if devs receive a non-creepy version of Windows, that'l…

Because the message would be "use only dev version of Windows, other versions are creepy shit".

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

#200

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

filomeno wrote: post #144

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.

Don't forget Visual Studio. Visual Studio debugging Linux applications via WSL is really cool.