Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Windows to Have Better CLI

Posted by Zonk on from the stephenson's-going-to-have-to-annotate-the-article-again dept.

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."

3 of 742 comments (clear)

  1. It's about time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:vaporware by LarsWestergren · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  3. Re:vaporware by ssj_195 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I hope you're not trying to paint me as "an MS shill"; check through my posting history and you'll see that this is anything but the case.

    Anyway, point by point:

    Well, unfortunately for them, 2000/XP, though better than Win 9x, are still far from reality. XP still does not run and run, 2000 does not either. They slowly come to a halt, XP faster than 2000. These OS can run and run, if you put one service only on them, and tweak them for two plain days until they ressemble nothing you could work with, which is a process I call tedious, not a "miracle". I never saw one of these OS run and run, but I suppose it is acheivable. Compared to a Linux that run and run without any tweak, there is still a chasm between the two OS.
    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.
    When KDE, despite being stuffed with features at every new version, becomes more and more fast with each release.
    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.
    Now, one thing I wonder : how MSH will come superior to bash, when bash is cross-platform, and msh is not ? It destroys one of the most important features of shells ...
    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.