Live data from Hacker News

Babun – A new Windows shell

babun.github.io

21–30 of 112 posts

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#21

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

Yes, compatibility with existing software is a big part of it. Unless you're exclusively developing for _nix environments you'll have to use Windows at some point.

Also, I think Windows has (or had, depending on preference) a great GUI and a dismal CLI, while _nix is mostly the other way around.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#23

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

My situation is I have a Windows machine I game on and don't like rebooting all the time to get into my arch partition. It'd be nice to have a good shell to do some dev work on if I wanted to fix something really quick without rebooting. Right now I just boot up a vm and work on that. Shells I've used in the past (ConEmu, Console 2, Cmder) have all been good, but not good enough.

I know from personal experience that Steam works slightly better on windows than linux, so I see your point there.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#24
post #8

Another ^nix -> Windows package system is the pacman port available in msys2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ msys2 has an impressive package list [1] and is almost [2] an amazing solution for mixed-platform projects. [1] https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages ) [2] The one caveat is that it is still susceptible to the Cygwin BLODA problem whereby under certain conditions and software combinations, Windows…

And this is why I can't hate Microsoft. They've vastly improved over the past 20 years! Why, I remember when Windows became dangerously unstable when you did not properly release a GDI resource or passed the wrong things into RegisterClass...

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#25
post #19

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

1. Because they prefer Windows. 2. Because their company has standardized on Windows desktops and/or hardware. 3. Because some people might actually believe and have good evidence that Windows is a more "developer friendly" operating system for their needs.

1 and 2 are perfectly legit reasons to use Windows. 3, though seems weird. If you're installing something like Babun to make your windows machine act more like a nix machine, it seems reasonable to assume that a nix box would be better for your development needs, and that you have some other reason for using windows (like #1 or #2).

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#26
post #24
post #8

Another ^nix -> Windows package system is the pacman port available in msys2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/ msys2 has an impressive package list [1] and is almost [2] an amazing solution for mixed-platform projects. [1] https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages ) [2] The one caveat is that it is still susceptible to the Cygwin BLODA problem whereby under certain conditions and software combinations, Windows…

And this is why I can't hate Microsoft. They've vastly improved over the past 20 years! Why, I remember when Windows became dangerously unstable when you did not properly release a GDI resource or passed the wrong things into RegisterClass...

What has Microsoft to do with MSYS2?

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#28
post #2

I was actually expecting a new GUI shell for the recent windows versions. I used to run bb4win in the w2k times, but it doesn't look like win 7/8 have any popular alternative shells available. Does anyone know of those?

KDE, but it's still fledgling on Windows: http://windows.kde.org/

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#30

No PowerShell integration makes this useless to me unfortunately.

Everyone who would be satisfied by Cygwin is already using cygwin. so this will not help them.

and people using CMD must use CMD for some reason, and even though that crowd would be please by just being able to maximize their windows, this does not offer any improvement for those people.

sadly, i'm in the second group.

Post reply on HN