More Unix Tools Coming To Windows 10 (neowin.net)

Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates brings news about beta 4 of Redstone (the Spring version of Windows 10's Creators Update for 2018): - Beta 4 of Redstone aka Build 17063 includes BSD utilities bsdtar and curl from the command prompt and Unix sockets (AF_Unix). These are also rumored to be part of a future version of Windows Server.

- WSL will now run background tasks and will continue to run them even after the command prompt window is closed...

- A previous story mentioned a discovered OpenSSH for Windows... OpenSSH and VPN can now be accessed via PowerShell in remote connections via the PSRemote commandlet. With the extra background support added you can for example keep a Secure Shell session open on a server/client and reconnect later.

- Also a tool is available called WSLPath to convert Linux to Windows path options
There will also be some graphical Windows Shell improvements with Microsoft's design language, and "Timeline," a new way to resume past activities...

Comments

Re:The very last thing I want is more bloat and mo

[hey!]

Nobody is being forced to install the Linux subsystem for Windows. Only people who want it. For me it makes Windows a lot more tolerable, and it means I don't have to give up my familiar tools when I boot into that environment.

Remove the spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the Windows 10 built-in spyware and I'll consider running the Windows operating system on more than zero computers again.

Re:Why?

[Billly Gates]

Unless Microsoft starts pumping out MS Unix with a Windows front end, none of the reasons for using Linux, BSD, or another Unix go away. This just seems like it would be cosmetic stuff for geeks who are used to being able to awk grep and sed their way out of most problems.

3 things:
1. MS is scared of competition. Their biggest nightmare has come true not from Linux, but from Mobile. If they do not stay relevent people won't buy win32 based apps or Windows
2. Visual Studio was in trouble as the cool kids use node.js, android and IOS development tools there is less demand for Visual Sudio and win32 desktop development. Good Android Studio, IntelJ, and even xcode are all knocking on Microsoft's doorstep
3. Virtual Machines are a pain for non I.T. professionals to configure and consume lots of resources

So Ubuntu and now Suse for Windows gives you the Linux command set. You can even use Debian tools like 'tasksel' to configure a whole LAMP stack and apt-get install npm from bash.exe and have a whole development environment FAST. If you mess something up just uninstall and reinstall Ubuntu/Suse from the appstore or add/remove features and start over.

These updates make it easier to cut and paste SMB and Linux paths and are nice when SSH into servers.

Visual Studio also has Android emulators that use Hyper-V underneath and include CLANG and other compilers if you go into options to help OpenSource and mobile developers. No you did not misread that!

What it shows is in 2017 that MS realized they are no longer IBM anymore. Times change and they want to remain relevant.

Ms also wants to host Linux and FreeBSD servers in Azure as well. I guess this is reason 3.5. As long as they get paid they do not give a shit what OS you use as to MS the platform is not Windows anymore. It is Azure and Windows or Linux are just one of it's layers that run on top. But that is semi unrelated to WSL but explains why VS is warming up to Linux as well.

Competition is good and as MS is very unpopular here, I have to say Apple scared me worse when Jobs was in charge when they started getting powerful. Just think what would happen if MacOS won the 1980s OS wars instead of Windows?

Re:35 year later...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. This.

"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
-- Henry Spencer, programmer