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Microsoft PowerShell Goes Open Source and Lands On Linux and Mac (pcworld.com)
Microsoft announced on Thursday that it is open sourcing PowerShell, its system administration, scripting, and configuration management tool that has been a default part of Windows for several years. The company says it will soon release PowerShell on Mac and Linux platforms. PCWorld reports: The company is also releasing alpha versions of PowerShell for Linux (specifically Ubuntu, Centos and Redhat) and Mac OS X. A new PowerShell GitHub page gives people the ability to download binaries of the software, as well as access to the app's source code. PowerShell on Linux and Mac will let people who have already built proficiency with Microsoft's scripting language take those skills and bring them to new platforms. Meanwhile, people who are used to working on those platforms will have access to a new and very powerful tool for getting work done. It's part of Microsoft's ongoing moves to open up products that the company has previously kept locked to platforms that it owned. The company's open sourcing of its .NET programming frameworks in 2014 paved the way for this launch, by making the building blocks of PowerShell available on Linux and OS X. By making PowerShell available on Linux, Microsoft has taken the skills of Windows administrators who are already used to the software, and made them more marketable. It has also made it possible for hardcore Linux users to get access to an additional set of tools that they can use to manage a variety of systems.
Embrace, extend and extinguish ???
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
fucking assholes.
Why doesnt microsoft just become a distro already?
On the downside: they kill off everything they touch so i guess there goes Linux.
How is a Windows sysadmin going to get anything done on Linux using PowerShell? How does this make their "skills more marketable?"
I am speechless. Like how useful is this?
Do they have to ruin everything? Or at least try to?
It looks as though MS has finally accepted the inevitable.
Though I shudder to think what hell may follow with MS getting it's fingers in the FOSS Pie.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Nope... We already have native tools on Linux to do the same and more. The last thing we need is .Net bloat on our pristine Linux systems.
Any system admin who can't administer a Linux system using its native tools should not be allowed near the system in the first place.
This move reeks of the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. Not needed.
I hope companies stay clear of this.
Solutions to problems no one except windows admins are having. I don't think I'll lose much sleep.
All of Microsoft's Linux-related activity is a gateway drug. Surrrrre, we play nice with Linux! We *love* open source! Yes, who wouldn't love open source software --- why pay a small army of developers gazillions of dollars when they can get a limitless supply of kids and summer interns to do the work for free?
It's all about luring you in to using Azure cloud services, folks. That is the bottom line. In other words follow the money, people, follow the money.
Microsoft open-sources something once again. So, what's their evil plan this time...?
And while we're at it, why is Bill Gates really trying to "eradicate diseases" in the Third World...?
(Note to posters and moderators: this isn't a troll, it's satire. Feel free to ignore it if you can't tell the difference.)
Bash...
Powershell...
Bash...
Powershell...
RIIIIGGGHHHTT!!!!
Powershell isn't really a scripting language - it's a command parser where all the commands are like "Disassemble-the_Complicated-Dictionary-using-impossible-Format".
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I ported all my legacy PowerShell scripts to Java ages ago.
Every once in a while I get told to run something under cmd.exe or PowerShell, and am reminded how incredibly limited these apps are when compared with any *nix *sh terminal app. Why does anyone think Linux users would take PowerShell over bash?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Here's a phenomenon I've never fully understood:
1. Somewhere in corporate America, a worker has Windows installed on their work machine. Windows wasn't their idea, they were just issued it. Everybody in the department has the same computer. It's fine, whatever.
2. The worker runs into some problem on the Windows machine.
3. They notify their assigned IT representative about it.
4. Their IT representative gives them a solution that only works on Linux, because all the IT guys use Linux.
5. That solution doesn't work on Windows.
6. IT representative shrugs.
So at the very least, maybe the advent of Powershell on Linux will give these people something to countertroll with.
please KYFHO my Linux! It's bad enough that I have to suffer your evil wares at work.
I doubt that PowerShell is going to be the solution, but it is emphatically true that Bash is a major pain in the ass.
With Bash, the solutions to simple tasks are moderately complicated, and the solutions to complex tasks are just downright stupidâ"you don't even use Bash for complex tasks.
It's time for something that was designed better.
What can Powershell do that BASH can't? Outside the Windows ecosphere, is there any use to this?
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
So, anyone with real experience want to weigh in on how Powershell compares to the Linux command line? I've only used it a bit, and nothing has really jumped out at me as more than an incremental improvement over (pseudo-) DOS. Basically - is this something that might actually be valuable to -nix admins, or is it just a way for Windows admins to leverage their existing skills when managing -nix systems?
Either way I'm kind of surprised Microsoft is doing this - seems like the biggest effect would be to make it easier for competing systems to worm their way into a traditionally Windows organization. Seems counterproductive, especially in light of the increasingly abusive behavior we're seeing with Windows.
Unless of course this isn't actually open source - I didn't see any mention of the license, and it would hardly be the first time Microsoft has attempted to poison OSS projects with unlicensed code.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This just seems like a very poor excuse for puppet/chef/cfengine etc... to me.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
If it's open source, go look for yourself.
I see this differently. Windows 10 now has linux built in. Powershell will be usable everywhere. Microsoft stated their intentions to embrace open source, and they appear to be following through. This lets powershell compete directly against bash and perl in the education sweepstakes, and changes the buying choice from Microsoft vs linux to Microsoft and linux vs linux. History suggests that we should be vigilant and looking out for Microsoft trying to apply the 3E model again (Embrace, Extend, Exterminate), but to flat out assert that it contains spyware is disingenuous.
OK. Not reading the articles, I get. I acknowledge that people don't even read the summaries anymore. But now we are even reading the TITLES anymore?
Microsoft PowerShell Goes Open Source
Look at the source. If you find spyware, there'll be fame and/or fortune coming your way.
This is Microsoft we're talking about here. Obviously, they mean to do harm with this action. What is it? They have a long track record of actions that *seem* great but turn out to have a harmful outcome (harmful to us, beneficial to themselves) years later. Does the hivemind see what this angle is? I'm not seeing it, but you KNOW it's there. This is a company that does NOT do altruism. Anything smacking of doing good for outsiders with no shareholder return would get vetoed immediately by the MBAs in management.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Powershell is horrible. It has some great stuff, don't get me wrong - the ease of using any .Net component from a script is interesting. But the haphazard nature of it means spending more time debugging and understanding obscure things about why it does things the way it does. I was using it for Azure scripting, but I've been burned so many times by it (and how crappy the Azure cmdlets are) that I've just gone to C# and .Net and the Azure REST APIs so I don't have to bend myself into contortions to do simple things and get deterministic results. Plus I can take advantage of things like generics, the TPL and collections in general which make my life a lot easier and more productive.
I can see using .Net core and C# on Mac or Linux. Powershell - no way.
If it's open sourced it can have the same amount of spyware the Linux kernel has if not less.
Nah, we're good. But, thanks anyway.
sig: sauer
This is awesome because only a linux fanboy would not see that:
/sarcasm
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Select-String 'hole_in_the_ground'
is sooooo soooo much better than
grep -r 'hole_in_the_ground'
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Patterns have a habit of repeating themselves. Assuming anything less is not a sustainable pattern.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
M$ Is evil! They don't make programs for Linux!! It's all a ploy to force people to use Windows!!
M$ is evil! They are making programs for Linux!! It's all a ploy to force people to use Windows!!
After years of insults and demeaning comment,s Microsoft suddenly realizes:
1. That Linux (and open source) has won (see AWS, any successful start-up in the past 5 years).
2. That lean command-line tools are probably a lot more efficient to manage servers than a GUI (see also: OpenSSH, coming soon to a Windows server near you... finally).
Now, let me say this: Dear Microsoft, I already know bash and ksh. I have no need for a bloated, incoherent new shell on my machines.
I know you mean well, thanks, but no thanks. As far as I am concerned, I will never, ever, use your OS ever again.
Now, let's go back to the subject (err... flame war) at hand: systemd. What the fsck? ;-)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Apparently someone doesn't comprehend sarcasm, or how richly Microsoft deserves all the sarcasm that gets directed at it. Do you have problems comprehending irony, too? Or people's facial expressions and moods? I think it likely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
ok seriously, does anyone else know of any shell that not only needs an entire framework install but also has 44MB of shit in it's source code?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The reason for doing this I thought would have been obvious, but from the comments it doesn't seem so.
No Linux admin, who administers standard Linux bare metal or VMs is going to install this, not in a million years, they've got bash scripts with GNU utils, or they learnt Python or Perl or something else years and years ago, they've no use for PowerShell...
If however, you use Azure (MS *are* the second largest cloud computing provider), and you want to do web scale, Microsoft either needs to start giving out Perl and or Python modules, or they need to get PowerShell on Mac / Linux for people to be able to script their Azure / SQL / Exchange instances so that the admins and devs can integrate with Chef and everything else out there.
With the amount of work that's gone into Powershell for it to be an admins platform, it's *easier* to port Powershell to Linux than what it is to rebuild powershell for Python or Perl or whatever else.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Good because if it's truly open source, decent coders and groups can fork it, fix all the poorly designed and coded bugs...I mean 'features' it has.
Bad because...Microsoft, stay the hell away from Linux. MS makes everything it touches worse, introduced more bugs and security holes.
"extend".
And people fall for it every time. Idiots.
Now Linux and Mac users can get reminders to "Upgrade" to Windows 10 like everyone else.
Seriously though, the existing Linux shells are much easier and more powerful than Powershell.
Sadly, I have to use Windows at work and try to get Powershell to do specific things and I feel like it's HAL saying "Sorry, I can't do that, Dave."
Has anybody looked at the .net open source to confirm if Microsoft code is actually quality or just lucky shit that just runs? Do developers(including contractors) hired by Microsoft code better than Open Source people?
Stupid questions, but, I read somewhere that someone at MS stated they just push code that works but does not necessarily mean all the bugs have been worked out.
Fuck off with your bullshit.
Kthxbai..
Powershell simply isn't good as either a scripting language, or as a programming language. It strikes the wrong balance between the two, and hence will never see any adoption outside windows land, where it will still only be used by people who don't know any better.
Why wouldn't you choose python over it? or even bash? it makes no sense to depend on something non-standard - particularly something that has a whole stack of dependencies, isn't simply isn't nice to use.
I am not a regular powershell user but it is frustrating that when I do use it I have to use a whole new object notation. Yes you can load from XML or json strings but it's native notation is quite obscure. Also, the "when to quote, when not to quote" is even more arcane than bash, sometimes having to inckude a command and parameters in quotes, sometimes not. I readily admit that this has been trial and error for me.
We can use PS until ultimately MicoFail will phase it out like it does everything else it designs. Who are they fucking kidding??
Old doesn't always equate to outdated or useless. Bash is perfect for the jobs it was designed to handle, and for the jobs it doesn't handle well, you already have other tools which are perfect for more complex jobs. The more complex your program needs to be, the less you want shell scripting (bash or otherwise). Shell scripting is for system administration, quick hacks, or small one-purpose programs where even python is overkill. Shell scripting shines when your work is focused on the command-line and especially when you're gluing together other command-line tools to quickly solve a problem. There is no simply better tool for that job, because the tool has more or less been perfected with little to no room for improvement. Sure, there are quirks, but if you ask me that is simply the nature of shell scripting, where the same interpreter that reads your command-line input is parsing your script.
Bottom line: bash is still in widespread use today because it's the right tool for certain jobs, and that's not going to change anytime soon. The same could be said for unix in general. If you're not a system administrator this probably isn't immediately apparent, but if you were, I can assure you that you wouldn't be "searching for something better".
Do you have problems comprehending . . . people's facial expressions and moods?
In a text thread? Not at all.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Look, the cloud is Microsoft's way of the future. Future versions of the desktop will be totally integrated into the cloud and future servers will only be cloud based.
The only major hindering block to that end is that people are using Open source OS more and more today. And that's not likely to change in the future. So my guess is that Microsoft is planning to make their own distro of Linux in the near future that will be totally integrated into their cloud infrastructure as well as integrate into their enterprise infrastructure such as Active Directory. Which for the bigger environments out there may be better than what they have now.
I wouldn't be surprised in the least if in that distro, you had the Microsoft app store well integrated too - hell the apps will probably be able to run seamlessly across distros. In the end Microsoft won't care which OS you're running - so long as it's in the Microsoft umbrella.
Linux and Mac availability is for Softies, not the rest of us.
Garbage I never knew I needed.
Microsoft stated their intentions to embrace open source, and they appear to be following through.
My sweet summer child, I used to be you. Bless your heart. Offering the benefit of the doubt is a noble and generous act.
History suggests that we should be vigilant and looking out for Microsoft trying to apply the 3E model again
Wait, so you know about this shit? You know they have a history of dishonesty and bad faith? I'm afraid I must now take a less charitable view of that first thing I quoted.
This is probably something they are doing in preparation to bringing SQL Server (and maybe Exchange) to other platforms. There server apps tend to be managed using PowerShell
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The dotnet core dev tools have telemetry built in and you are automatically opted-in. It can be turned off, but in typical MS fashion they slid it past everyone hoping it wouldn't be noticed. It's perfectly rational to suppose that the PS port has telemetry reporting features in it. I would assume it does and so should everyone else.
Fear the GrEEKS, even if bearing gifts!
>something that was anathema to them
Word of the day toilet paper?
Most our org's PS scripts are in VB-Script. Is there an interpreter for it on Linux?
Table-ized A.I.
That's about all I can say.
Never use anything Microsoft, especially on Linux.
Keep all spyware off of Linux. It is almost 100% like that, with Debian being FBI now it is not 100%.
You can use old Debian and never update it.. 2.6.x kernels, but there are better. I like Arch (especially Blackarch), opensuse, and the BSD's.
Microsoft got jealous that systemd was having all the fun?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In a moment of cross-promotional marketing genius, the Catholic church will be offering free cattail whips suitable for self-flagellation to early embracers of PowerShell on Linux.
In this thread: a bunch of fucking sperglords who can't into sarcasm or irony.
Solves some problems maybe. Such as the Microsoft oriented IT people who are finding more and more work is moving to Linux, Macs, and other Unix systems, and their only job qualification is having a powershell certificate that is seen as worthless paper to everyone outside of Windows.
But seriously, there are people who think that way. They find themselves becoming irrelevant but want to carry over their old skill set if they move to anything new.
It's a trap!
With the bash on windows and ps on Linux, being able to drive ps from python will be looked forward to. As a replacement for bash or python it sucks, and works completely differently. On the other hand, a python module permitting one to programmattically generate and run ps scripts, and receive what comes back would be welcome.
John_Chalisque
Nice. And it works fine on Ubuntu running on Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10.
No, not really. The management modules in PowerShell are what makes it useful and most of those are just wrappers around Windows-specific functionality. e.g.: Disk and Partition management are WMI wrappers; User and Group management are AD wrappers; etc. So the "powerful tool" parts of PowerShell don't exist on non-Windows platforms.
If it's open sourced it can have the same amount of spyware the Linux kernel has if not less.
Hard to have less since LK has none.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I do a lot of XML processing on Linux--in fact, I'd say 80% of my work is with XML. While XML files are obviously text, handling them as plain text is an invitation to disaster. They're really much more like objects, and I mostly use Python when I want to process XML. (For some simple manipulation, I use xml_grep, but only for quick-and-dirty tasks.) Usually I read the XML stream into Python (using SAX or DOM, depending), and convert the parts I need into Python objects for further manipulation. The traditional Linux shell commands (which I use lots for the remaining 20% of my work) are just not suited for XML.
I've never used PowerShell, and the fact that it manipulates objects is interesting. Would some users like to comment on whether it's suited for processing XML?
The Debian commitee members will probably vote for Microsoft PowerShell to replace Bash.
I want to run Powershell commands within a bash shell and be able to pipe their output to Unix utils, and I want to be able to run Unix utils in Powershell and pipe their output to Powershell commands.
I want to be able to mix and match them somehow.
Mostly, I think, the Powershell commands would be most useful paired with a bash shell and Unix utils, at least how I end up needing/wanting to use Powershell most of them time -- which I freely admit is biased by much more experience at a Bash prompt than a Powershell one, and mostly using Powershell commands to generate some kind of output that I want to work with Bash-style.
I recognize that merging them would be complex in some ways, as many Powershell commands return objects not output and the shell is just doing basic formatting of the object as textual output.
But maybe there could be some kind of hydbrid mode pipe operator that would just do the basic console output it would normally do, but send it to an instance of a Bash environment, or some way to access Powershell cmdlets from within bash as if they were normal programs that provided output.
AppleScript was the Apple version of VBScript (I believe it still exists) but it was so quirky and buggy that only a few experts with years of experience (many at Apple) really used it for nontrivial things. It was useful if you you could find a prewritten script to do what you wanted, with support when the next point release of the OS or the target programs broke it. Anything sound so familiar?
PowerShell flat out sucks. It's not a bad idea, but it's so badly done and so hard to use it's just not worth it. I had to write part of a script library when I was first at M$, and it was sheer torture.
m$ shills forward!
to replace shell scripts because Poettering said so
Wait till you see Exchange Server 2016. It's still chock full of gotchas, but with a completely new (web-based ) management interface. the PowerShell-based management shell is still there, however, and remains the best way to manage things.
Management issues aside, Exchange is a useful product. Synchronization of e-mail, contacts, and calendars with iOS and Android smartphones is supported out of the box, and Outlook Web Access is the best webmail implementation I've seen.
My main issue with it is that Jet databases are fragile. Had they implemented SQL Server as the back-end, it would be far more resilient.
so sorta like java, write once, own everywhere? or is that just docker?
The whole time Microsoft was trying to kill the shell, they had one Linux guy pushing hard his whole carer to make the shell relevant again. This is the one project that did great things in spite of Microsoft. That same guy just ensured that it was open sourced. In his big launch demo today, he had people from AWS and VMWare showing their Powershell tools running on OSX and Linux. This guy has been anything but typical Microsoft and really worked with the community to build Powershell into what it it is today. He was the same person that tried to bring Linux services to windows back in the day and brought bash to Windows.
Seriously: http://strawberryperl.com
LOTS of CPAN compatibility. I've made a career on it.
The issue I had with with powershell goes back to its earliest implementation in
Exchange 2007. I and other MS sysadmins spent years learning the intracasies of MS's wacky GUI admin consoles, and then with the release of Exchange 2007, tasks that used to take under a minute in 5.5, 2000, and 2003 required 15 minutes of googling and Technet-ing just to find the correct applet. Then when things didn't work the first run through, you had parse through the alien syntax to get the result you wanted. Most infuriating for folks who spent the early 2000s in 5.5 to 2003 environments was the fact that a lot of stuff that was available in the GUI exchange management console was flat out missing in the 2007 GUI EMC. It put a lot of folks in a tough spot that first year. But then just like any other "new" bit of tech out of Redmond, you swallow your pride (and the previous ten years of experience) and get on with your life and learn the "new" tool.
Come on, you know you all want to try building powershell in 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', then open powershell, run bash from inside it and then run powershell again.
More crap from M$. Does anybody who uses Linux actually want that gangrenous pustule?
And no, systemd isn't even close to being as bad as powershit.
"... worst syntax features of every scripting language..."
My reaction exactly.
Articles:
.NET, Part 1 of 3. (Because the problem is in .NET.)
What I Hate About PowerShell
Is PowerShell really this bad?. Quote: "... the strangest mashup of Perl and VAX/VMS I've ever seen." Another quote: "... one of the most ass-backwards, lipstick on a pig, polished turd add-ons to the Microsoft stack in recent years."
Why Microsoft doesn't fix the long file name issues in PowerShell: Long Paths in
And don't forget the very poor writing quality of the documentation.
Instead, just install cygwin on Windows. Big improvement.