What Can BASH on Windows Do?
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As did TechCrunch.
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@Dashrender said:
Oh, so you what? want to run PowerShell commands in Bash? why is this useful?
Of course, its useful because people know BASH and it is easy to use.
Microsoft has two shells already and all of the utilities made. We want to run them with BASH. That's what BASH on Windows means.
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@Dashrender said:
See this is where I am totally lost.. what is the different between BASH and KRoN and PowerShell? what makes them different?
Syntax, features and behaviour.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Unlike Macs, Windows is it's own system - Macs are based on FreeBSD, so those commands were already build to work with BSD, so nothing needed to be changed.
WHAT COMMANDS???? BASH's commands are things like "for" and "do". I have no idea what commands you are talking about.
Commands like LS and RD and MD, etc - but I see what you are saying. .those are just executables.. they aren't part of the shell - so again.. what the heck is a shell? what makes one better than another?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Unlike Macs, Windows is it's own system - Macs are based on FreeBSD, so those commands were already build to work with BSD, so nothing needed to be changed.
WHAT COMMANDS???? BASH's commands are things like "for" and "do". I have no idea what commands you are talking about.
Commands like LS and RD and MD, etc - but I see what you are saying. .those are just executables.. they aren't part of the shell - so again.. what the heck is a shell? what makes one better than another?
Right. The shell is the REPL from the programming language that lets you run commands in real time.
What's odd is that your reaction is this way... but most people see the shell as so important that they mistake one OS for another based on the shell alone!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
See this is where I am totally lost.. what is the different between BASH and KRoN and PowerShell? what makes them different?
Syntax, features and behaviour.
Why would syntax be different?
I don't know what you mean by features?
and behavior - ok that one I understand - in Windows for example you get the are you sure you want to delete but in BASH if there is no error you get no feedback. -
@Dashrender said:
Why would syntax be different?
Because different languages have different syntax. Ever used two different programming languages? That's all shells are.
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@Dashrender said:
I don't know what you mean by features?
History, command completion, short cuts, loops... all the things that different languages have and their REPLs.
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@Dashrender said:
and behavior - ok that one I understand - in Windows for example you get the are you sure you want to delete but in BASH if there is no error you get no feedback.
While that is true, that's only sometimes the shell. If something is asking, likely that is the app itself.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I don't know what you mean by features?
History, command completion, short cuts, loops... all the things that different languages have and their REPLs.
http://mugurel.sumanariu.ro/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bash.png
ctrl+r is the greatest thing ever.
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@johnhooks said:
ctrl+r is the greatest thing ever.
Can't possibly up vote enough!
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I also do ctrl+d every time I'm using the cli on Windows, and I look like an idiot. Never fails.
I noticed that image says ctrl+d is delete. It's always logout for me, not sure what they're talking about. It is old though.
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I believe its actually called Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, all the people calling it Bash on Windows are wrong and giving a wrong meaning for many. Bash doesn't run on Windows ala Cygwin, bash is running on a ubuntu image that talks to WLS
https://i.imgur.com/YYzbt5A.png
Here is a video of some of the things you can do with it.
As the video shows, it is mainly targetted at developers.
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@Romo said:
I believe its actually called Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, all the people calling it Bash on Windows are wrong and giving a wrong meaning for many. Bash doesn't run on Windows ala Cygwin, bash is running on a ubuntu image that talks to WLS
Almost. BASH runs on the WLS which is sometimes confusingly called "Ubuntu on Windows" as a product name. You have to be VERY careful, this is where brilliant marketing people come in.... it's NAME is "Ubuntu on Windows" but there is no Linux kernel so it is neither Linux nor Ubuntu running, ever. There is no Ubuntu running on Windows, just something with a name meant to imply that.
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@scottalanmiller, it appears to be ubuntu userspace. They are running the same Ubuntu ELF binaries only on WLS, wouldn't that allow it to be called ubuntu?
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@Romo said:
@scottalanmiller, it appears to be ubuntu userspace. They are running the same Ubuntu ELF binaries only on WLS, wouldn't that allow it to be called ubuntu?
Well... define Ubuntu first. It's in no way the Ubuntu OS, not even slightly. Unless you can tell me that no one that says Ubuntu means Ubuntu Linux, then no, it's not Ubuntu.
I've never met anyone who said Ubuntu meaning something that this would qualify as.
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We never, ever say that we run Windows on Linux, even though we've had WINE. WINE is an API emulation layer, but no one thinks it is Windows. But that's what is going on here.
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@scottalanmiller said:
We never, ever say that we run Windows on Linux, even though we've had WINE. WINE is an API emulation layer, but no one thinks it is Windows. But that's what is going on here.
They should have called this product LINE... Linux Is Not Emulated, lol.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
We never, ever say that we run Windows on Linux, even though we've had WINE. WINE is an API emulation layer, but no one thinks it is Windows. But that's what is going on here.
They should have called this product LINE... Linux Is Not Emulated, lol.
Exactly. It's interesting technology, it's an update to a subsystem that has languished and been forgotten (how many Windows "Admins" - see other thread - even know of the UNIX Subsystem for Windows which has been there for over two decades?) and will be kind of useful to developers, I guess, but is not very useful overall. It's not for production use, it's really just for desktops and it lacks all of the power and functionality that would have made it interesting.
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Part of the issue is that one department is out there saying that this is only for developers and that it is crippled and useless. Then another department out there working hard giving it names to totally confuse people. Saying things like that Ubuntu is running on Windows, which is obvious BS and a total lie. Ubuntu is not the user space, that's kind of important, but that's just the icing, not the cake. The cake is a lie here.
And the Ubuntu user space includes a lot of stuff for administration, if those don't work, how can we claim that we have the full user space?
It's just a large collection of apps from Linux that will run on Windows. That's interesting, but interesting at best until they get it doing something more.
