This appears to be a genuine attempt to put the shell on Windows (which, again, is only remarkable because it is Microsoft doing it). Sure, NT used to have a crippled POSIX subsystem, but it wasn’t practical. The surprise was that Microsoft would “cross the streams” and officially support a Linux/Unix tool on Windows. I’ve used Cygwin and UWIN to have a very full-featured Linux environment under Windows for years (and did the same with MKS under DOS). The surprise isn’t that this is possible. First, Microsoft made bash available (and other Linux executables) for Windows 10 as a native application (you can find the detailed install directions online). Two things have recently happened that surprised me. While it isn’t compatible with a traditional Linux shell, it has similar powers and many people–especially system administrators–make heavy use of it to automate tasks. In addition to running programs, the PowerShell can use functions and cmdlets (programs made to interact with the shell). Eventually, this was supplanted by Monad which later became known as the Windows PowerShell. Microsoft finally addressed the shortcomings of its default command interpreter, first introducing Windows Scripting Host to allow Javascript and VBScript batch files. I’ve seen a few people use things like Rexx as a shell under DOS or Windows, but it has always been a small minority. In the old DOS days, some of us went to 4DOS which was nice, but no bash (and apparently morphed into the Windows Take Command Console software. If you want more power, you can move to some alternatives, but even bash is pretty powerful if you learn how to use it and have the right external programs (if you don’t believe it, check out this web server). There are lots of variations available under Linux, but bash seems to be the current pick for most people. One place where Linux always used to have an advantage over DOS and Windows was the shell. On Linux, I could drill down to the lowest levels of the OS if I were so inclined. It is great except around the screen edges where it goes wild. My HP laptop works with a cheap Dell active stylus. What I hate most about Windows is how hard is it to see what’s going on under the hood.
The laptop is on Windows, too, because I got tired of trying to get all the fancy rotation sensors and pen features working properly under Linux. While I run Linux on nearly everything I own (with the exception of a laptop), my work computers mostly run Windows. Now that platforms like the Raspberry Pi are popular, that number is probably increasing every day. A lot of us spend a lot of time switching between Windows and Linux.
0 kommentar(er)
