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Windows to Have Better CLI
MickyJ writes "The command line interface to the Windows Server OS will be changed to the new Monad Shell (MSH), in a phased implementation to take place over the next three to five years. 'It will exceed what has been delivered in Linux and Unix for many years', so says Bob Muglia, a Senior VP at Microsoft." More from the Tom's Hardware article: "The language in Muglia's comment offers the first clear indication that WMI may be yet one more component being left behind, as Microsoft moves away from portions of Windows architecture that have historically been vulnerable to malicious attack."
Microsoft ignoring the command line is just as silly as ignoring the Internet. It's only taken them longer to realise because only power-users and sysadmins are affected instead of every user.
Because they can rip off Linux/UNIX shells that have been developed, tested and improved by hundreds (thousands?) of people over the course of more than 20 years?
Linux/UNIX shells have been developed, tested and improved by hundreds (thousands?) of people who use them repeatedly every day over the course of more than 20 years. How the hell is MS going to make something superior in 3-5?
I hate to be in any way sticking up for Microsoft, but don't underestimate the value of starting from a clean slate.
Apple has done some pretty nifty things, for instance launcd . I know it's not popular with everyone, but I think it was pretty cool replacing all these different scipts and daemons, and having one XML based config file. They simplified by daring to question established wisdom (the "We've always done it this way so it must be perfect" mindset.)
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Heck, this is probably what's taking them so long to actually release Monad. It's one thing to create a scripting language, it's another thing completely to create hooks that allow you to actually administer systems with the scripting language. UNIX has the advantage that A) everything is a file, and B) nearly all configuration files are some sort of structured text.
Microsoft is all excited about being able to pipe objects on the command line, but that's really only because that's what Microsoft has to work with. All of the information that you want is locked up in some poorly documented binary file somewhere that was designed to be accessed from some sort of GUI. The beauty of UNIX's strategy is that I don't have to read some sort of API for a certain configuration object. Instead I simply eyeball the text files and use a vast array of text manipulation tools to do what needs doing.
Anyway, point by point:
On this, we'll have to agree to disagree; I've seen XP crash a handful of times: a few times when it turned out my graphics card was faulty (this crashed Linux, too) and once when I was copying a file from my Linux comp to a friend of mine's XP comp via samba. The latter is inexcusable (but funny side-note: my friend blamed "Linux's crappy Samba implementation", even though it was his computer that crashed, not mine!). The rest of the time, my XP computer at work truly does run and run, requiring a reboot only when a critical Windows Update is required. Your experiences are apparently different. This is true - KDE has been getting faster and more memory-friendly - check out the "top" output for KWrite (or is it Kate) under the KDE4 prototype code. I'm very pleased with the progress of KDE, and a recent talk by Robert Love (on optmising GNOME) shows that the Desktop Linux developers are very committed to reducing bloat, which I couldn't be happier about. However, the fact that KDE is getting faster either tells us that something that's always been good is getting better, or something that was slow and memory hungry before is getting better - much like Mac OS X, which started out dog-slow but which has been improving in speed with each successive release. Respectfully, I'd have to say it was the latter: on my 256MB laptop, KDE starts to swap more and much sooner than XP does (i.e. with fewer apps open). Firefox consumes far more resources than IE (although admittedly it also accomplishes far more). Having said that, the focus on the Linux side is on getting faster (I'm drooling with anticipation at XGL), so on the speed/ memory consumption side I see Linux ultimately winning out. Cross-platform-ness is admirable, but a shell where objects are first-class citizens sounds pretty good to me. I determine the power of a shell by how much easier it will make my life.I can't belive you wrote that page-long screed without even reading what he wrote. I see this kind of crap on slashdot all the time. The only "Microsoft shill" there is the strawman you set up. I'll bet if I go back through your posting history you've made the same speech several times.
I'm so sick of this kind of brainless Microsoft bashing. Most of the people here parrot the group-think line without having any idea what they're talking about. I suspect that means you, since my experience with XP is much different.
Right now at work I'm using RHEL for development and XP for gaming/taxes/whatever at home. Guess what? XP, in my experience, is more stable than Redhat. That's not shilling, it's just my experience. I've never (not once) had XP crash on me. I wish I could say the same for Linux.
It's true Microsoft pays "journalists" to come up with nice reviews in trade magazines. They know that's what non-technical management reads to make up it's collective mind. The only way Linux is going to make inroads into the corporate desktop is by being demonstrably better than Windows. That way the one or two honest tradesheet writers will write a nice article to give some backing to those of us that want to support OSS.
But how can Linux improve if a substantial portion of its advocates can't even fucking see it's not perfect? As the grandparent noted, every release of Windows narrows the gap. If Microsoft adds a shell that I can use from a remote machine that removes one of the three reasons I don't use Windows for serious work:
- no shell (cmd doesn't count)
- viruses
- I want to support OSS
I hope there never comes a day when the only reason I have to run Linux is the third reason. I'll never be able to sell that to the boss.Oh, and by the way, don't bother accusing me of having "no knowlege" of the FOSS world. I've been writing and using FOSS since the internet was born. Have you?
Well... I've played with technological preview of Monad. Being bash addict, I must however admit, that Monad offers functionality beyong imagination of modern Linux shells. It passes objects through pipes instead of text and is strictly object oriented. It uses a model of namespaces, so in Windows, you are able to browse registry, file systems, environment variables, etc. in unified way.
The authors claim, that it's modelled after the VMS shells. VMS seems to regain its fame in Microsoft, with Windows NT kernel being originally designed by Dave Cutler - a VMS guru.
Monad really rocks and is worth trying.