Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrsw | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully one day Bash will be the default Windows CLI.

Bash has its warts too. Treating everything as strings can cause headaches when filenames have spaces. As a long-time Linux user who recently learned some powershell, I find Bash rather primitive after getting accustomed to an environment where everything is an object.

I wonder how feasible it would be to build a powershell-like environment for Linux on top of Python.

>I wonder how feasible it would be to build a powershell-like environment for Linux on top of Python.

Well, you could just run PS itself.

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/in...

It's probably doable with time... and (mostly because nobody's directly linked to it yet) the official Powershell is now on github under the MIT license:

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

There is Xonsh [0].

[0] http://xon.sh/

That was the approach I took before inventing PowerShell. We didn't WANT to invent a shell - we were forced into it.

The problem was that Bash on Windows wasn't effective. At the heart of the matter is the difference in architecture between Unix and Windows. In Unix, most everything is a file so if you can modify files and restart processes, you can manage everything. In Windows, most everything is an API so tools that manipulate files don't do much for you.

Ergo - we needed an admin automation model which supported an API oriented architecture. Thus PowerShell.

NOTE - Bash on Windows today has a very different focus - it is not about managing Windows (which it still doesn't do) - it is about using OSS tools to develop OSS Software. It does a great job at that.

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]

I don't see PowerShell as a Bash replacement, I see Bash as more of a cmd replacement. I'm a user, but I'm also a developer so Bash works for my needs. PowerShell, not so much. It's powerful, no doubt, but it's not the solution I was looking for. Admins can always fire up PowerShell if they need it.

I didn't WANT to run Windows - I was forced into it.

Path of the course perhaps. After 30+ years of fighting a what was always a "rear guard action" against the prevailing dominant Unix customs and methods Nadella has switched Microsoft and Windows into a full-on conformist mode by removing the immediate -> monetization of the OS and thus the need to be "different".

It would not surprise me in a few years to come, to find even sooner than expected that "Windows" had become another variant of Unix in effect if not entirely in fact.

Microsoft has made some good changes, but don't get your hopes up! :)

Maybe an year or two after all Linux users migrate their to some idiom of Python.

Or maybe a compatibility layer, where they integrate the most common bash commands and Unix utilities. I prefer Git Bash when on Windows for this reason.

There is a compatibility layer now, it just happens to be a complete Ubuntu environment.

More likely that PS will be the default Linux CLI than visa versa. Looking at their technical merits and all...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com