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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

#221

Post by jsz0 »

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…

> What is it that MS is actually trying to do?

They're trying to prevent Windows from becoming the COBOL of operating systems.

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

#222

Post by paulddraper »

rattler wrote: post #121
lightbyte wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. Windows 10 is the last version of Windows that Microsoft is making. It will be continuously updated instead of new versions being released.

I find it very hard to believe that 10 the last version of windows.

Apple was on OS X for awhile.

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

#223

Post by ghshephard »

badminton1 wrote: post #205
ghshephard wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an interesting link for you: https://thenewstack.io/future-wsl-distro-independent-flexibl... . In particular, check out this tidbit: “Until you run Bash, no Linux process can run on your machine. As soon as you open Bash, you can choose to start any background services you want to have run. If you want to have MySQL or FSH or ssh or Postgres or Apache or whatever run, you can start them manually or autostart…

That's specific to a Windows implementation. bash is GNU bash, on every operating system. A Unix shell. It has been the same since 1989. The authority on what GNU bash is and what it is not is GNU, not Microsoft. Then GNU bash is not required to run stuff under Linux. There are system calls to run programs. e.g: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/execve.2.html Many distros do not even ship with GNU bash. The limita…

I'm curious as to whether you realize that you've now taken so strong a position on this issue that you've blinded yourself to the evidence? I just gave you some information that showed that, the center of activity for Creators Edition is Bash. Bash is the only way that you can launch your linux subsystem on windows. Lots of work has been done on this Bash environment. It's entirely reasonable for Microsoft to say, "What's new in Bash/WSL and Windows Console" - as that's where they've done all the work. Bash is not just a Unix Shell in Microsoft's particular implementation - unlike every instance of Unix I've ever used (Starting with SunOs in 1993, but including zillions of iterations of Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc...) - your shell on WSL is not just an entry into /etc/passwd, but instead is your operating environment - that, when it goes away, takes the entire process tree with it.

I kind of get what you are saying, that you are irked that Microsoft is trying to take some ownership of Bash, when it's really a GNU property - but, honestly, this is more like a temporary fork. Right now, for Anniversary Edition and Creators Edition - Bash is the center of gravity (along with the console environment - tons of awesome stuff there). And I agree with you, that this feels like a temporary hook, and that in the future, WSL will be able to run without Bash - and that will be a good (great!) thing - crontab! And then, Bash will hopefully just return to being what it was before - just a shell. (Perhaps with a few extra WSL hooks than vanilla GNU Bash - but we've already agreed that each implementation of Bash will have those hooks, so nothing new there.)

How about we both agree that Bash is a shell. Developed and Maintained by GNU. That is required by WSL right now to launch the linux subsystem, and therefore work by Microsoft on their Bash environment is important to WSL.

Fair enough?

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

#224

Post by JdeBP »

nxc18 wrote: post #168
filomeno wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This increases their user base. Every time you install WSL & Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, you are getting a full Ubuntu distribution. The only user base that shrinks is the Linux Kernel user base; Ubuntu and Linux are two separate concepts, and WSL demonstrates that they are in fact fully separable.

As does UbuntuBSD, of course.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11415985

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

#225

Post by nailer »

zadjii wrote: post #183
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…

Basically every release we look at if it's possible to get us to tabs in that release window. If it's not, then usually we'll do some architectural work to get us closer to that goal. Part of the problem is that most of the codebase is from 1993, so there's a LOT of architectural work between where we were when Windows 10 first launched, and proper tab support. We're working hard on that architecture stuff now, becau…

Hi Zadjii I really appreciate you answering. If it's a 25 year old code base, wouldn't a rewrite be easier? What's the process of taking something like that and trying to modernize it?

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

#226

Post by felipelemos »

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.)

And besides the iTerm2 on OSX that everyone here agrees it one of the best, Terminator on Linux does a good job too.

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

#227

Post by barrkel »

laumars wrote: post #129
barrkel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For problematic processes, I use kill -W -- that uses the TerminateProcess Win32 API, rather than Cygwin's POSIX implementation. I also use it to kill things like the Windows Update full-screen overlay on Windows 10.

That's handy to know. Thank you very much!

Whups. It's ps -W to find PIDs for Windows processes, and kill -f to use TerminateProcess. Got the two flags confused; you usually use one with the other.

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

#228

Post by bitcrazed »

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…

Hi - PM for Windows Console & Bash on Windows here.

YES ... one day ;)

We're keen to figure out a decent tab story for the console, and the feature ask is on our backlog, but we're currently fully booked completing some important internal re-factoring, after which we'll be able to return to working on important asks like this.

FWIW, we're currently giving the Windows Console its biggest overhaul in > 30 years!! We're re-factoring and modernizing many of the Console's core internals.

We'll be writing-up the why's and wherefores of what we're up to in a couple of months.

Stay tuned on our blog (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/richturn_ms) for news, udpates, and info.

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

#229

Post by bitcrazed »

mikewhy wrote: post #211
Notre1 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Apple Terminal, iTerm, gnome-terminal, konsole. I can't really name one worse than ConEmu. ConEmu likes to do this cute thing where it stops accepting key presses. And with the all the options it has, "starting a new terminal in the directory of the previous" is nowhere to be found. But still, it's probably the best on Windows if you want tabs.

To be fair to ConEmu, Cmder, Hyper, and all the other Windows terminals/consoles, we don't currently provide a way for them to truly become genuine consoles.

We're working to fix that, but we have to clean things up a little first. Bear with us.

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

#230

Post by bitcrazed »

nailer wrote: post #225
zadjii wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every release we look at if it's possible to get us to tabs in that release window. If it's not, then usually we'll do some architectural work to get us closer to that goal. Part of the problem is that most of the codebase is from 1993, so there's a LOT of architectural work between where we were when Windows 10 first launched, and proper tab support. We're working hard on that architecture stuff now, becau…

Hi Zadjii I really appreciate you answering. If it's a 25 year old code base, wouldn't a rewrite be easier? What's the process of taking something like that and trying to modernize it?

This XKCD is equally applicable to this problem - just replace "standard" with "Console" (or any other app for that matter) ;)

https://xkcd.com/927/

And, no, simply rewriting the Console is not an option: Entire businesses' core systems depend on the Console, its specific behaviors, and even its bugs.

If we break existing behaviors we get to hear about who we've broken very, VERY quickly ;)

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