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Babun – A new Windows shell

babun.github.io

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Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#71

Post by greggman »

_xhok wrote: post #33

While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the…

I'm on Mac so don't bite my head off.

That said, I was much more productive on Windows for many things. You mentioned games. Game development is much larger on Windows. More access to more engines, tech, examples, tools, etc.

Visual Studio's debugger still blows away anything I've seen on Mac or Linux. PIX, Microsoft's GPU debugger is still the standard to be met.

.NET, C# and Windows Forms were amazing ways to bang out tools for artists and designers that I've seen no match for on other platforms yet.

I guess the short of that is, it really depends on what you're working on.

But I'm still amazed that those things are missing on other platforms. It's not like Visual Studio is some new product. It's been arguably the best debugger for 15+ years? It's surprising that no one as duplicated it on other platforms.

Same with Windows Forms. Sure there are UI libraries but none of them have that perfect storm of features that makes banging out certain kinds of apps so easy. I'm guessing the most used features are Windows Forms Property editor (point it at a class, get instant interface to edit all of the class's properties). Another is probably their data grid editor.

So yea, I love me some unix shell but I'd prefer not to have to choose a good shell vs good other things.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#72

Post by paulrov »

_xhok wrote: post #33

While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the…

> like games

Better off just dual booting if that's the reason

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#73

Post by ygra »

mattmanser wrote: post #68
qwerta wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with current shell. Who needs window resize or copy&paste anyway?

Now, now, be fair. alt-space > e > p becomes pure muscle memory. It's actually a really elegant key combination that I definitely did not have to look up 10 times before it stuck because no other program uses it. And of course powershell, which doesn't Get-Have-The-Most-Over-Verbose-And-Stupid-Naming-Conventions-Ever and have a terrible language design that results in [console]::writeline("Powershell {0} being a comp…

Just to be fair:

1. Clink [−7½] and PSReadLine [𝜋] both enable you to press Ctrl+V. On Unix-likes you're told to use a better terminal emulator to handle such cases nicely (something like ytcxbcixvt or what's hot these days) and most people don't think twice about heeding that advice, yet on Windows people willingly suffer, grumbling and complaining?

2. gal and Tab help a lot. And I actually prefer commands like Import-Csv over things like almf in readability (at least they weren't formed by bashing your head on the keyboard). But that might just be me.

3. 'PowerShell {0} being a complete farce' -f 'not'. In the scripts I've written I could probably count the number of [Console]::WriteLine calls on one hand (unary).

[−7½] http://mridgers.github.io/clink/

[𝜋] https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#74

Post by ygra »

orf wrote: post #67
viraptor wrote: 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?

Power shell?

They meant a replacement for Explorer as the GUI shell. Don't confuse the following things:

1. Command-line shell (cmd, PowerShell, bash, whatnot)

2. GUI shell / desktop environment (Explorer, Gnome, KDE)

3. Console host / terminal emulator (conhost, console2, conemu, xterm, ...)

Invariable all of those are referred to as »shell«, sometimes even by people who ought to know better. The linked site makes the same mistake. It's not a new shell for Windows, it's just zsh bundled with cygwin.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#75

Post by ygra »

username42 wrote: post #70

VirtualBox with a shared directory is also a way to have all the niceties of unix without installing MinGW or Cygwin.

Unless you actually have to work on that shared directory, at which point the abysmal performance results it in being nigh-useless.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#77

Post by Already__Taken »

doorhammer wrote: post #35
_xhok wrote: post #33

While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the…

I'm a self-taught programmer. I've basically been using linux 99% of the time for the past five years, and just have a partition that runs windows if I need it. Funnily enough, the first real programming gig I landed is a full time job doing full stack .NET development, so now it's sort of flipped around. I do miss the command line. I'll have to check this out. I've been looking for a good windows shell replacement.

You should take a serious look at using powershell, they've aliased a lot of commands to what you expect on linux so you're not completely foreign and it's got a similar workflow mentality you're used to i.e pipe commands.

And you can work with .NET natively.

That said it is NOT to imitate linux, it's conceptually not the same which is good because Windows isn't either.

Here's a 101; commands are `verb-noun -parameter value` these pipe | objects(!) not strings. The first thing you should do is win+R powershell type: get-alias and after that `get-help ls` just drop in powershell wherever you used to calling cmd and see how it goes.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#78

Post by _xhok »

greggman wrote: post #71
_xhok wrote: post #33

While part of me still wants to tell would-be hackers to just switch to OS X or Linux, I've realized recently that a lot of hackers are bound to Windows because they use various software that only works on Windows, like games, or because of social limitations. I have no clue how good Babun is, but I have no clue how I ever got anything done on Windows without a Unix shell. Cygwin is not out-of-the-box enough, and the…

I'm on Mac so don't bite my head off. That said, I was much more productive on Windows for many things. You mentioned games. Game development is much larger on Windows. More access to more engines, tech, examples, tools, etc. Visual Studio's debugger still blows away anything I've seen on Mac or Linux. PIX, Microsoft's GPU debugger is still the standard to be met. .NET, C# and Windows Forms were amazing ways to bang…

That is a good point. Visual Studio is actually one of the things I have positive emotions about from my Windows days.

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#79

Post by ygra »

Already__Taken wrote: post #77
doorhammer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a self-taught programmer. I've basically been using linux 99% of the time for the past five years, and just have a partition that runs windows if I need it. Funnily enough, the first real programming gig I landed is a full time job doing full stack .NET development, so now it's sort of flipped around. I do miss the command line. I'll have to check this out. I've been looking for a good windows shell replacement.

You should take a serious look at using powershell, they've aliased a lot of commands to what you expect on linux so you're not completely foreign and it's got a similar workflow mentality you're used to i.e pipe commands. And you can work with .NET natively. That said it is NOT to imitate linux, it's conceptually not the same which is good because Windows isn't either. Here's a 101; commands are `verb-noun -paramete…

Another word of advice: Try to use the pipeline as much as possible. Passing objects through the pipeline is a core concept of PowerShell for a reason. Don't try writing C# with PowerShell syntax (as I see so many people do on Stack Overflow).

Some answers I have written on SO that exemplify that:

• http://stackoverflow.com/a/7394766/73070

• http://stackoverflow.com/a/1046291/73070

• http://stackoverflow.com/a/14481495/73070

Re: Babun – A new Windows shell

#80

Post by adamors »

hetman wrote: post #39
adamors wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X has both actually.

Apple makes it hard to run OS X on anything but Apple hardware. For anyone that doesn't want to be bound to Apple hardware, this is not really even a real option.

It's trickier to get OS X working on a laptop, but building a Hackintosh desktop is quite easy. A lot of motherboards are entirely compatible, while everything else (CPU, RAM, storage) works anyways.
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