Live data from Hacker News

Sudo for Windows

devblogs.microsoft.com

31–40 of 439 posts

Re: Sudo for Windows

#31
post #25

Well, sudo for Windows has been a thing for, like, a few years now?... https://github.com/gerardog/gsudo Not sure if this is the same thing, but this definitely should have shipped with the very first implementation of "oh, sure, you're an Administrator, but not really, since we're ignoring that bit" a.k.a. User Account Control. That would have saved about a metric ton of misguided "here's how to turn off UAC" tutori…

gsudo is great! It's got a lot of features for power users, it's got a great community, and I can't recommend it highly enough. There's room here for us to be better together - Sudo for Windows can cover a number of in-box scenarios, with OS-side support for things like GPO, event logging, etc. But then for power users who need access to some of the wilder features of gsudo (running as TrustedInstaller?), that's alwa…

I would love it if I, as a lifelong Windows fanboy, could offer anything but a snarky reply to the author of a new OS feature. Yet, good luck with that and don't look at the headstones of those who came before you is all I can muster.

Re: Sudo for Windows

#32
post #21

We already have runas for years now. This looks like one of those KPI fulfilling projects.

That requires you to open an new terminal window. You've never been working in a standard terminal, tried to run a command that requires elevation, and been annoyed that you have to open a new window losing your command history?

Or forgot to Run As and opened a non-elevated terminal by accident?

Re: Sudo for Windows

#34

This will be a very controversial prediction, but mark my words: Windows will eventually use the Linux kernel.

I strongly doubt they would ever do something that drastic. It offers few benefits and many roadblocks. It would be a monstrous amount of work, would throw into question many existing security-related certifications, break Microsoft's love of backwards-compatibility, etc.

Re: Sudo for Windows

#35

What's the difference from opening a Terminal (Admin) window? Just that you can run a single command as admin? I must be missing something here

Opening a terminal in admin window which means any commands you put in that windows will always have admin privilege, no matter what.

What does Sudo is to only provide the root/admin privileges for specific inputted command. Once it is done, it goes back to user privileges. This way, the terminal window didn't need to end the session to go back to user privileges.

Re: Sudo for Windows

#36

What's the difference from opening a Terminal (Admin) window? Just that you can run a single command as admin? I must be missing something here

> Just that you can run a single command as admin?

I mean, that's sudo's whole thing! [1] You can live your day to day terminal life without the risk of borking things too badly, then when you occasionally need to elevate to higher privileges you can do it easily for that specific command.

[1] Technically not the whole thing obviously, but it's a very common use case.

Re: Sudo for Windows

#37

This will be a very controversial prediction, but mark my words: Windows will eventually use the Linux kernel.

I don’t disagree. How I think it will happen: Backwards compatibility will start to stray at Microsoft (their last bastion), leading to WINE becoming the go to tool for backwards compat support. Microsoft will create a linux variant or maybe just a DE and the rest will be history (just as Libre Office has begun to supersede MS Office). It is a matter of will and time that C-Suite will want to eliminate labor around W…

In what business segment is Libre Office superseding MS Office? Furthermore, NT supports "personalities". Why bother with a full Linux kernel when they could adopt the personality a la SUA?

Re: Sudo for Windows

#38
post #21

We already have runas for years now. This looks like one of those KPI fulfilling projects.

That requires you to open an new terminal window. You've never been working in a standard terminal, tried to run a command that requires elevation, and been annoyed that you have to open a new window losing your command history? Or forgot to Run As and opened a non-elevated terminal by accident?

I believe the new window is to prevent SHATTER attacks (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_attack), to ensure that a higher privileged process has a higher privileged Window. Is that not a concern anymore with this new sudo, or is there some other mitigation involved not?

EDIT: from the linked wiki page, "By design, all services within the interactive desktop are peers, and can levy requests upon each other. As a result, all services in the interactive desktop effectively have privileges commensurate with the most highly privileged service there."

Re: Sudo for Windows

#39
post #30
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure Win11 is on my company roadmap, much less anything cutting edge like an insiders release. Windows 10 Enterprise compatibility is pretty much required for widespread adoption of Sudo for Windows.

Windows 10 is EOl next year. I would bet your company has plans to move to 11 at some point in the near future. I work with customers daily to help to move to 11

> I work with customers daily to help to move to 11

What issues are your customers having that they need profesional help to upgrade to a new Windows OS?

Re: Sudo for Windows

#40
This adds a factor of enshittification for NT, NT doesn't need 88 line PowerShell scripts, this "sudo for Windows" thing makes Windows seem like a teenager's high school project. Windows NT already has runas, let NT be NT and let POSIX have sudo/doas. Previously Microsoft hired the best of the best operating systems engineers in the USA who were from Digital and they proved to be people capable of making an operating system able to scale from MIPS to PowerPC/DEC Alpha/IA-32/amd64/Itanium with any combination of hardware and peripherics, now they're allowing random people to push 88 line scripts and calling it a day. Very few people in this world deserve the privilege of touching any Windows NT code and even more few people deserve the possibility of pushing things to the build lab of Windows NT 10/11 builds
Post reply on HN