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.

Comments

Heu.. ????

[ls671]

Embrace, extend and extinguish ???
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Heu.. ????

[Bobfrankly1]

Ugh, PS is horrendous - especially trying to learn the f***ed up way it works.

But on Windoze hosts you have nothing else command line wise to manage AD and Exchange (mostly what I punish my self with).

It's object oriented. If you don't have a even a basic understanding of how objects work, of course it's going to be confusing. Once you break past that wall however, you find a well documented and sane terminal. Sadly many think "different" = "bad".

Re:Heu.. ????

[Somebody Is Using My]

No. Well, yes, but not in the way you think.

This isn't about Microsoft trying to "conquer" Linux. Increasingly Microsoft is less interested in maintaining operating system dominance. The OS is not a growth market, and not one that people really care too much about; they use whatever their computer (or device) comes with. Instead, Microsoft is betting big on becoming an OS-agnostic software-as-a-service company. That isn't to say that they are entirely abandoning Windows (and knowing Microsoft's legendary inter-departmental rivalries, you can bet the Windows team is fighting the rest of the company to keep their product relevant) but long-term I wouldn't be surprised to see all of Microsoft's products available on Linux, MacOS, IOS, Android and any other OS they can reach. It - not Windows dominance - is where Microsoft believes the company's future is.

Re:Heu.. ????

[MightyMartian]

Overly verbose, syntactically complex, and most of all just astonishingly slow. I use it because there's no real alternative on Windows, but every time I have to code in PowerShell, I just think "So close to bash, but yet so far away." I cannot imagine anything that would compel me to use Powershell on a *nix system.

Re: Heu.. ????

[silentcoder]

Considering how flaky exchange and SQL server is, that's no endorsement at all - after all, when the things it manages are utterly unreliable pieces of shit, whose going to NOTICE if the management tool also sucks ?

Re:Heu.. ????

[Dracos]

After 20 years of MS trying to kill the shell, they relented and decided the Windows platform needed one. But in typical MS style, they asked themselves "How can we make a shell that's notably different from everything else that already works?" and someone piped up "OOP is the Way of Everything." Welcome to another episode of Redmond: Not Invented Here Syndrome.

Re:Heu.. ????

[MightyMartian]

No, I'm asking how is cutting off a path of a file (as an example of the kind of shortened output Powershell commands can produce) informative? And yes, I know it's fairly easy to overcome, but it just strikes me that this is the kind of GUI-centric thinking (this kind of output is straight out of a Listview object) that infects Powershell.

Re:How much spyware is in it?

[Austerity Empowers]

Solutions to problems no one except windows admins are having. I don't think I'll lose much sleep.

Bash...powershell

[the_skywise]

Bash...

Powershell...

Bash...

Powershell...

RIIIIGGGHHHTT!!!!

It's not what I call a scripting language.

[VAXcat]

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".

Re:God Save us.

[fisted]

Nope -- they only ruin Lunix. The BSDs are doing fine.

Slashdot Commentor

[Merk42]

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!!

Re:who wants it?

[Bobfrankly1]

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?

For many, working with an object-oriented terminal is immensely more preferable to having to wrangle text.

Re:A sign of things to come.

[nine-times]

I think this is simple a smart move. You don't really have Linux admins saying, "Man, I wish I had Powershell!" as much as you have Windows admins saying, "I spent all this time making Powershell scripts. I wish I could run the same scripts on Linux." They're servicing their own users, and providing extra value in learning to use Microsoft technology.

This is the sort of thing that I used to think Microsoft was stupid for not doing.