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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

#21

Post by laumars »

badminton1 wrote: post #11
laumars wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entry point to WSL is bash and while you may be able to compile and install other shells, calling it "bash" isn't too far from the truth. Really the awkwardness of the naming is more of a testament to the power of scripting on Unix-like OSs (eg how scripting is a first class citizen and how most of the ecosystem is modelled around CLI, and thus scripting, support) more than it is an insult. As for cygwin, that w…

EDIT: Your choice of shell can be something different than bash... you opt to use zsh or fish or another shell. Therefore saying "Bash for Windows" can be objectively said to be unnecessarily confusing/inaccurate. I think Cygwin was less convenient than an ABI such as WSL, but by no means "terrible". Cygwin was initially released around 1995, it served a valuable purpose before the first VM products came along.

Typing on a phone. autopredict errors happen and I usually miss at least one of them since my proof reading skills suck. Apologies for that

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

#22

Post by flukus »

laumars wrote: post #20
aerovistae wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft adds this amazing set of features and the only response you have is "your name is insulting the people you're trying to appeal to"? "Trying"? As if they're failing? Do you know how much people love this project?

A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. Microsoft have done a lot over the years to troll the Linux community. While many of the younger HN members will be familiar with the "new open source Microsoft" some of us oldies have had to endure IE breaking the web plus ActiveX / Silverlight and other MS web lockins. Comments like "open source is communism" from top…

> A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour.

I'm also not convinced they've changed at all when I see what they've done to things like skype, where they have somewhat of a monopoly (thanks to office).

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

#24

Post by NickGerleman »

finchisko wrote: post #17

>Upgrade In-Place ...though this may not result in an optimal instance. Wondering why such a disclaimer? Ubuntu apt upgrades are reliable. Or is it related to WSL? Anyway good job WSL team.

I've definitely had issues doing an upgrade on a real Ubuntu installation. Years ago I needed to update a more or less clean install of Ubuntu Desktop. It managed to completely break Gnome somehow (This was before Unity). I'm guessing things are better now and that the server distribution is better for this but I could see complications happening.

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

#25

Post by barrkel »

laumars wrote: post #9
badminton1 wrote: post #3

Bash for Windows... Bash is a Unix shell. Linux is an operating system. Completely different concepts. Bash on Windows has existed for decades now, through Cygwin. https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-cat.cgi?file=x86_64%2Fba... Trying to reduce the entire GNU/Linux ecosystem to "Bash" is insulting to the community you are trying to appeal to: Linux is an immensely large and complex project, which has millions of line…

Your entry point to WSL is bash and while you may be able to compile and install other shells, calling it "bash" isn't too far from the truth. Really the awkwardness of the naming is more of a testament to the power of scripting on Unix-like OSs (eg how scripting is a first class citizen and how most of the ecosystem is modelled around CLI, and thus scripting, support) more than it is an insult. As for cygwin, that w…

Cygwin isn't terrible; it's much better than mingw for the simple reason that it provides an environment much closer to POSIX. Its biggest problem is forking speed. I don't think it has a second big problem; the next biggest is the crashes you get if you do partial updates and don't rebaseall.

Cygwin enabled me to stick with Windows since 2003 or so, and have the same environment on Windows, Linux and OS X. The command line is where I spend most of my time, and apart from Firefox every daily app I use on Windows is a cygwin app, from tmux through to Emacs.

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

#28

Post by reacweb »

NickGerleman wrote: post #24
finchisko wrote: post #17

>Upgrade In-Place ...though this may not result in an optimal instance. Wondering why such a disclaimer? Ubuntu apt upgrades are reliable. Or is it related to WSL? Anyway good job WSL team.

I've definitely had issues doing an upgrade on a real Ubuntu installation. Years ago I needed to update a more or less clean install of Ubuntu Desktop. It managed to completely break Gnome somehow (This was before Unity). I'm guessing things are better now and that the server distribution is better for this but I could see complications happening.

After a major change of desktop like a switch from gnome 2 to unity or gnome 3, it is not surprising that users may need to refresh their configuration files. I am doing dist-upgrade since 2009. They were all smooth except the upgrade to 16.04 (lost of network and a couple of small issues still not fixed).

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

#29

Post by cel1ne »

NickGerleman wrote: post #24
finchisko wrote: post #17

>Upgrade In-Place ...though this may not result in an optimal instance. Wondering why such a disclaimer? Ubuntu apt upgrades are reliable. Or is it related to WSL? Anyway good job WSL team.

I've definitely had issues doing an upgrade on a real Ubuntu installation. Years ago I needed to update a more or less clean install of Ubuntu Desktop. It managed to completely break Gnome somehow (This was before Unity). I'm guessing things are better now and that the server distribution is better for this but I could see complications happening.

I used Ubuntu Server LTS a couple of times.

The 14.04 version which is supported until 2019 still has the bug that it won't clear out old kernels after upgrading them. So if you don't look into your /boot partition now and then it fills up and breaks your installation.

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

#30

Post by fragmede »

finchisko wrote: post #17

>Upgrade In-Place ...though this may not result in an optimal instance. Wondering why such a disclaimer? Ubuntu apt upgrades are reliable. Or is it related to WSL? Anyway good job WSL team.

If you're asking why Microsoft's advice is to format and reinstall, well, consider who it's coming from.
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