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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the ho-ho-ho dept.

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...

123 comments

  1. That'll make hacking it nicer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ta for the environment!

    1. Re: That'll make hacking it nicer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft needs to get rid of the shitty powershell curl alias and go full curl.

    2. Re: That'll make hacking it nicer by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 1

      Microsoft needs to get rid of the shitty powershell and go full bash.

    3. Re: That'll make hacking it nicer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Need to get rid of shitty Microsoft.

    4. Re: That'll make hacking it nicer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, we just need to rid the web of shitty trollers... /stare (posted via my Nexus 7 tablet; Linux at work)

  2. The very last thing I want is more bloat and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    security holes. Seriously... I tried to install two versions of Qubes OS on my machine the other day but the installer just repeats the same menu after flashing some error for a split nanosecond. Must be the hardware. I then realized that there is really nothing left for me to run. Windows 10 is a true nightmare OS, but ordinary Linux has just as many problems and is still not secure because it still runs everything in a single "context". Not to mention systemd and all this BS for Linux, including arrogant and condescending "support"... There really is nothing to run at this point. Qubes OS people won't even recommend any hardware that *does* work...

  3. 35 year later... by JustNiz · · Score: -1

    Give them a few more decades and they might finally support remote displays.

    1. Re:35 year later... by arth1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Give them a few more decades and they might finally support remote displays.

      Hah. The new generation of Linux programmers do their utmost to destroy that in Linux, with "hot corners", no lbx or X fontserver. In fact, I think you'll have a hard time with many of the "modern" Linux flavors of running anything except a video streaming application like a VNC client. At which point you might as well use Windows.

    2. Re:35 year later... by mikael · · Score: 1

      They even took way the little [v] and [^] buttons in the scroll bars. When a web browser was jammed up with downloading content, I could still scroll up and down with those little buttons. Now the scrollbars just look broken.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    3. Re:35 year later... by hey! · · Score: 1

      Why stop there in your indictment? Remember the bastards took away the Meta key too.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:35 year later... by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

      So enlighten me on the advantages of X compared with VNC? Thank god Wayland is dumping all the legacy bullshit for people who want responsive graphics and not close to four decades of kludges.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    5. Re:35 year later... by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 4, Informative

      The first advantage is that you can ssh into a machine on the opposite side of the building (or the country, or the world) and run a graphical program on your own machine. If that program is written using proper X techniques (essentially vector graphics), then the bandwidth requirements and latency are lower and the quality is higher than if you are using VNC that has to render the window completely on the server end, compress it, send it over, and decompress it to display on your end.

      The second advantage is that you don't need to remote in. On a high-speed network that you might have in the office, you can say DISPLAY=otherbox:0 ./foobar and have the program display on the other machine without any intervention on that other machine. This is more of a niche use, but it is very useful for remote information displays and control rooms. It's a good alternative to the Windows paradigm of adding another graphics card and manually starting a full screen display program and hoping it ends up on the correct remote display.

      The third advantage is that programs written thirty years ago will display correctly and do not need to be recompiled or rewritten to play with the latest and greatest fad. Wayland, Unity, what else is there? SystemD is bound to have a display server pop up at some point.

      The fourth advantage is that it works out of the box without requiring (or inviting) a bunch of third-party garbage that's only compatible with itself, costs money, and is fragile by virtue of existing to establish vendor lock-in rather than accomplishing a task.

      The fifth advantage is that you can turn graphical applications into background processes by using Xvfb, which you can start as a user process and use via DISPLAY=localhost:NN ./graphical_program, the same way as you would redirect it to any other display. This works because the X protocol is shared by both.

      The sixth advantage is the big one: it works. It isn't broken. What do you gain by replacing it?

    6. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correct versus wrong basic idea, and it works a fuckton better than the mega kludge VNC, especially if you actually try, like using nomachine or similar.

    7. Re:35 year later... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      There is FreeBSD for the real Unix folks who like the old style documentation and FreeBSD handbook and hate gui things. ArchLinux I heard has the same elitist thing that you can custom configure but a disclaimer I never used that one.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    8. Re:35 year later... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Another few:

      - Remote X works with your window manager. You can choose which windows overlap others, not entire displays. You can minimize them as other window. You can move individual windows between different screens. Dock them.
      - Remote X works with your X clipboard. I can mark and paste into or from a remote X window.
      - Moving windows around isn't laggy. The graphics primitives are cached (especially with lbx) and do not have to be re-sent as you move a window.
      - You don't get blurry text when the subpixel rendering differs between different machines. Because the text is rendered in your own display.
      - You don't get flyspeck when the remote side is a much higher DPI than the local side. Or obnoxiously large text when it's the other way around. Because the X server is on your local machine, you are in control.

    9. Re:35 year later... by arth1 · · Score: 2

      But I don't hate GUI things. I like it so much that I want my GUI thing when I display remote windows. X11 provides that.

    10. Re:35 year later... by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 4, Informative

      X11 is a vector protocol unlike VNC. If you use GLX over the X11 protocol, an app can send 3D OpenGL commands over the X connection over a network, this allows you to run apps on a different computer and display them to another computer and do it with a faster speed than a raster protocol. So X protocol isnt just for 2D, and its not outdated therefore, it has been able to do full 3D graphics for a very long time.

      Once upon a time the fonts were rendered on the X server, the X client could just send the text and the server would render it. For whatever reason, they decided to change this. This was around the time the Render extension happened. This caused clients to switch to sending font bitmaps to the server and then composite the bitmaps together on the server for alpha transparency support. Alpha transparency could have been implemented on the server side font model, but they chose not to do this. There are some applications for the Render extension for fonts which are used inside a web page and for sending images to the X server and being able to reuse fonts and images on composite operations on the server without having to upload rasterized images everytime the applications window content layout changes, this could actually save resources for network transparency.

      One thing that could have been done is to allow uploading of PNGs, JPGs and TTFs to the X server and have the X server rasterize them, this would make things work better over network connections, and allow the client to choose to use server side font rasteration with alpha transparency if the server has the font it needs. As others have mentioned, there was an X Font Server as well which the X server could download remote fonts from.

      One of the things we hear from Wayland proponents is X11 hasnt been network transparent. This is not true, even Render should be useable over a network connection since you can upload your images to the server and composite them together on the server, GLX is certainly network transparent. Clients are supposed to be written so they fall back to sending any image data over the socket if shared memory is used. So shared memory while not useable for network transparency does not conflict with it since the client just falls back to sending image data over the wire.

      X11 is more flexible than VNC since you can export single applications between different desktop sessions. There are even tools to move an X program from one X server to another so you can switch which computer or display an X program is displayed too. There are X based remote desktop tools. There were even programs like XMX that allowed you to multiplex an X application to multiple X servers simultaneously.

      The legacy support in X does not consume a significant amount of resources, its very insignificant, so thats a false canard that should be soundly refuted. The core X protocol graphics primitives are simple and few in number so it takes little code to implement them. Increasingly, as well, there is a move to transition the X servers backend to use OpenGL mesa drivers so the X server will use the same drivers as the DRI programs, so these X 2D primatives will be rendered by the OpenGL driver code, which will avoid driver duplication and means the X 2D primatives and the 3D be rendered by the same code and drivers anyway, so the legacy X protocol support really does not use a significant amount of resources.

    11. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      X11 Network transparency is one of these things that's one trotted out in order to build geek creds, but is nigh-unusable crap in practice. X protocol is absurdly inefficient (which is why NX is at least 10 times faster), insecure and difficult to manage, while most app developers don't program correctly for a network environment (very few programs use Xcb to avoid sync latency, or even just use group operations like XInternAtoms).

      Just about any real use would benefit from a faster, more secure remoting app. The rest of the 'advantages' are generic open-source or because it's old and existing crap.

    12. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is all just nonsense. I use remote X every day... even between virtual machines. Sure, use a compressor over a laggy network... I used to use remote X on a 56k dial up with that.

      Just because you think it's just 'geek cred' and you have no use case for it doesn't make it "nigh-unusable crap in practice", this is provably false.

      Again, see above, I prove that it works in practice every. single. day. And have since the mid '90s

    13. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes. This.

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

    14. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I wrote 'nigh-unusable' not 'unusable'. One _can_ configure it, but it's arcane and I find almost zero use cases for it not better covered by a non-transparent alternative (maybe if you have some very legacy stuff. XDMCP would be semi-useful for chroots if distro updates didn't break the config all the time).

    15. Re:35 year later... by rastos1 · · Score: 1

      If that program is written using proper X techniques (essentially vector graphics)

      (Excuse my ignorance) Does that include programs written using GTK? Qt? SDL? Tkinter? wxWidgets?

    16. Re:35 year later... by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      then the bandwidth requirements and latency are lower and the quality is higher than if you are using VNC that has to render the window completely on the server end

      That is now true for a small subset of programs written with a subset of tools in Linux. You'll find a lot of what you do in X is now not identical to the way VNC does it, only due to the fact VNC uses compression to speed it up.

    17. Re: 35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GTK/Qt isn't a proper way to write anything. wx does have Motif bindings, and SDL can use glx, so yeah.

    18. Re:35 year later... by OneAhead · · Score: 1

      Tiny nitpick: if you're using "ssh -CX", you're also having the compression benefit. For a lot of applications, it actually speeds up X11 forwarding quite a bit (possibly because of what you just said; bitmaps images of desktop applications are often very compressible).

    19. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they took away TWM!

      Oh, wait. No, it's here. Yeah, just change your window manager to that and you'll have a fine environment again.

    20. Re:35 year later... by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1

      QT before version 4 (or 5) was a wrapper around X11 commanfs. After, it started doing its own rendering and sending a bitmap to X11. This was claimed to be a performance boost (though QT3 worked just fine for me) and so it could play with X and Wayland and Unity without recompiling. Now there's a kludge for ya.

    21. Re:35 year later... by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1

      X protocol is absurdly inefficient (which is why NX is at least 10 times faster)

      Depends on usage and use case. As others point out, if you're tunnelling over SSH, you get a level of compression for free. If not and you're using it locally, you get the benefit of 100Mb/sec or 1Gb/sec links.

      insecure

      Who cares? Tunnel it securely and there's no problem. You know what else is insecure? Just about everything. Yet we manage to mitigate it just fine.

      difficult to manage

      You say that, and what pops into my head is the image of a kid fresh out of school who not only thinks he's invented sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, but the entire computing industry as well.

      while most app developers don't program correctly for a network environment (very few programs use Xcb to avoid sync latency, or even just use group operations like XInternAtoms).

      Most software is crap. If you're acquiring software for use in remote sessions, that's one of the parameters to check for.

    22. Re:35 year later... by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Exactly what programs are you running over an X session? Don't even fucking tell me you use it to open a terminal window.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    23. Re:35 year later... by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Tell that so the systemd crowd, not me. A separate fucking toolchain for dealing with log files. So you recreated grep, sed, and awk but this time they work on the binary log files. Totally worth it.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    24. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes!

    25. Re:35 year later... by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1

      The machine I'm typing on right now has two Emacs windows on it served over from a headless machine sitting right next to it. That's the majority of my uses. The transparent clipboard really does wonders for usability there since I can drop text right into and out of those windows from local programs.

      Another use case that comes to mind is openning up an email client on another machine so that I don't have to copy over and install SMIME certificates on my own box and can read encrypted emails that way. Don't go after me for compromising security on that...it's done over an encrypted tunnel.

      Other than that, mostly programs I wrote myself that were intended to be used that way, hence they were written using QT 3, rather than 4, though both work, the former is faster.

    26. Re:35 year later... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      Performance. Bandwidth efficiency. Better integrated. Better for doing things like remote displays from embedded devices.

    27. Re:35 year later... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      QT is a hideous viral mess.

    28. Re:35 year later... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      Which is far more fundamentally efficient: sending a few specific drawing commands only when something changes? or transmitting multiple bitmaps of the whole screen (even just compressed deltas) every second?

      Also,X isupports the resolution of the remote display, and only sends the application's wndow. VNC can only give you the server's whole desktop at whatever resolution the sending side supports. Lets not even get into the associated security issues of showing a whole desktop.

    29. Re:35 year later... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The former.

      Except that hasn't been how most Linux apps draw on X for a good 20 years now.

    30. Re:35 year later... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you gain by replacing it?

      systemd

    31. Re:35 year later... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      if they're remotely displayed, yes it is.

  4. Re:The very last thing I want is more bloat and mo by Soylent+Beige · · Score: 3, Informative

    Qubes Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)
    https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/

    --
    Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
  5. cygwin by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 3, Informative

    https://www.cygwin.com/

    1. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      You're joking, right? They don't even ship an uninstaller with that POS. Cygwin is useless trash that should be taken out back and shot. It might have been useful ten years ago but it's just trash now.

    2. Re:cygwin by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

      https://nuwen.net/mingw.html

      Portable and doesn't require any uninstall other than deleting the directory.

    3. Re:cygwin by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1
      Worked for me.

      del *.*/r is the uninstall command.

    4. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mingw has a vastly superior experience to Cygwin.

    5. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Deltree doesn't work anymore?

    6. Re:cygwin by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Informative

      Works fine for me. It's actually more integrated with Windows than UFW is - you can do things like "cmd /c start ." from a bash prompt and Windows will open an Explorer window to view whatever directory you're in. Have it run OpenSSH and you can do things like remotely ssh in and shutdown or reboot the PC.

      Cygwin's only major flaw is the lack of a proper package management system (you have to run a GUI tool outside of the Cygwin environment which only half works, and there are no automatic updates.)

      UFW is more Unixy, but the price for that is a lack of good integration with the Windows side of the computer it's running under.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    7. Re:cygwin by murdocj · · Score: 2

      Cygwin is a gift from the gods. It works, it does what I want, and it doesn't get in the way.

    8. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      It's a piece of shit and you're a retard.

    9. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Cygwin hasn't been updated in many years the last time I looked. WSL you can choose Suse and soon Fedora. Ubuntu all you need to do is an apt-get install x. You are running a real version of Ubuntu and install any linux app. The only difference is a Windows kernel instead of a Linux one. But the apps that are put on Ubuntus apt-get repositories are THE EXACT same ones you get on Windows with everything up to date. Ubuntu makes it not Microsoft.

        Cygwin tries to convert the calls between Unix and win32 and doesn't even have a package manager so it can be quirky and ugly.

    10. Re:cygwin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      % uname -a
      CYGWIN_NT-10.0 hp15t 2.9.0(0.318/5/3) 2017-09-12 10:18 x86_64 Cygwin

      Seems to have been last updated 12 September 2017. And Cygwin has a package manager, download it from https://www.cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe and it see section 2.3 of https://www.cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.setup.cli for running it on the command line.

      Cygwin compiles GAMESS (https://www.msg.chem.iastate.edu/gamess/), Dalton (http://daltonprogram.org/), Octopus (http://octopus-code.org/wiki/Main_Page), babel (http://www.ccl.net/cca/software/UNIX/babel/index.shtml), OpenBLAS (http://www.openblas.net/), and xv (http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/greg_xv.html) just fine, and of course gnuplot 4.6 patchlevel 6 (which I maintain to avoid an annoying bug in later versions) compiles and works as well. Perfect for people who publish results, not just make bash scripts only a few people ever see.

      Compiling gcc version 7.2.0 was painless. Throw "set t_ti= t_te= syntax=none" in ~/.vimrc and
      set ignoreeof noclobber filec history=500 prompt="hp \!% "
      set cdpath=(. ~)
      along with a few other things in ~/.login and you're set for life.

    11. Re:cygwin by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      % uname -a
      CYGWIN_NT-10.0 hp15t 2.9.0(0.318/5/3) 2017-09-12 10:18 x86_64 Cygwin

      Seems to have been last updated 12 September 2017. And Cygwin has a package manager, download it from https://www.cygwin.com/setup-x... and it see section 2.3 of https://www.cygwin.com/faq/faq... for running it on the command line.

      Cygwin compiles GAMESS (https://www.msg.chem.iastate.edu/gamess/), Dalton (http://daltonprogram.org/), Octopus (http://octopus-code.org/wiki/Main_Page), babel (http://www.ccl.net/cca/software/UNIX/babel/index.shtml), OpenBLAS (http://www.openblas.net/), and xv (http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/greg_xv.html) just fine, and of course gnuplot 4.6 patchlevel 6 (which I maintain to avoid an annoying bug in later versions) compiles and works as well. Perfect for people who publish results, not just make bash scripts only a few people ever see.

      Compiling gcc version 7.2.0 was painless. Throw "set t_ti= t_te= syntax=none" in ~/.vimrc and
      set ignoreeof noclobber filec history=500 prompt="hp \!% "
      set cdpath=(. ~)
      along with a few other things in ~/.login and you're set for life.

      Or I can just apt-get install X. Seems less complicated does that not?

      I do not like Cygwin as I found it hacky when I tried it last admitting 10 years ago. It uses posix to win32 call conversions like the inverse of wine and I am glad it has a package manager now. But if you still have to compile things maybe there are still issues?

      The whole problem with this (yes it implies with WSL as well to an extent) is Windows is object based while Unix is text based. If you need automation on Windows PowerShell is really the only option to interact with WMI and CMI which is the heart of the Windows ecosystem. The reason for this is grep, sed, awk, and pipes are not designed to handle objects, but text.

      According to Wikipedia WSL was not designed for admins, but for programmers who need to put something in node.js, mysql, etc. If you use the tools to connect to another box running Linux then putty will work just as well as a third party tool.

      WSL will eventually come with the WSLPath to integrate somewhat. WSL to me is alot simpler than cygwin and even obsoletes it in many ways if you want a Linux environment that WILL WORK. But I reserve judgement as I have not used it in 10 years.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  6. Re:The very last thing I want is more bloat and mo by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  7. The year of Windows? by GbrDead · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will 2018 be the year of Windows on the command line?

    1. Re:The year of Windows? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

      Beware of the Hidden Costs!

      Using Unix tools on Windows means that you will liable to purchase a $699 license from SCO, who own the copyrights for Unix!

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:The year of Windows? by bignetbuy · · Score: 1

      Knowing Microsoft, we will soon see "Client Access Licenses" for this too.

    3. Re:The year of Windows? by Insanity+Defense · · Score: 1

      That is $699 per core. Too bad for you if you have a high end CPU as they probably also want it for hyperthreading "cores".

    4. Re:The year of Windows? by execthts · · Score: 3, Funny

      2018 will be the year of the Linux on Windows desktop

    5. Re:The year of Windows? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Windows 10 should implement a Wayland compositor next.

    6. Re:The year of Windows? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      We at Microsoft heard your cries slashdotters! We are making this the year of the Linux desktop just like you all wanted.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    7. Re:The year of Windows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, its the year Windows turns into Unix made user friendly. Only like 20 years after macOS...

  8. Not beta 4 by Degats · · Score: 1

    Nitpick/Pedantry:
    It's not "beta 4 of Redstone"; version 1803 is codenamed Redstone 4 (RS4). 1709/Fall Creators is Redstone 3 (RS3), 1703 was RS2 and so on.
    Windows 10 Preview builds don't have beta designations, only a build number, and eventually release candidates which have the final release build number but aren't necessarily individually numbered themselves.

  9. Can't believe this took so long by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

    When I was using Windows I always had Cygwin installed, and when I switched to using a Mac one of my favorite aspects (seriously) was having a real shell and all of the unix utilities again. While Cygwin works, the integration with Windows was never great (perhaps that changed over time) and I seem to recall having to use c: or something like it so the mapping to the filesystem was annoying.

    I use still like curl, vi, emacs and even grep/sed/awk stuff all the time still, not to mention shell scripts - maybe Windows power users have been getting my with PowerShell, but it just seems super unlikely. Hope they enjoy the new utilities.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Can't believe this took so long by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      When I was using Windows I always had Cygwin installed, and when I switched to using a Mac one of my favorite aspects (seriously) was having a real shell and all of the unix utilities again.

      I went from Windows to Linux, but then (circa 2003) switched to Mac because it gave me all the Unix tools I relied on, along with easier access to mainstream programs I needed - like Photoshop.

      Now, Microsoft is moving towards the command line for power users, while Apple appears to be dropping hints they want to lock down computers the same way they lock down iOS. When I'm ready for a new computer in two or three years, I'm not sure it'll be a Mac. I still have a lot of history-driven distrust of Microsoft, though... but Linux is still there.

      And perhaps, by that point in time, systemd will include its own 64-bit Windows emulation layer. At which point I might opt for early retirement and no computers at all.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:Can't believe this took so long by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      When I was using Windows I always had Cygwin installed, and when I switched to using a Mac one of my favorite aspects (seriously) was having a real shell and all of the unix utilities again.

      I went from Windows to Linux, but then (circa 2003) switched to Mac because it gave me all the Unix tools I relied on, along with easier access to mainstream programs I needed - like Photoshop.

      Now, Microsoft is moving towards the command line for power users, while Apple appears to be dropping hints they want to lock down computers the same way they lock down iOS. When I'm ready for a new computer in two or three years, I'm not sure it'll be a Mac. I still have a lot of history-driven distrust of Microsoft, though... but Linux is still there.

      And perhaps, by that point in time, systemd will include its own 64-bit Windows emulation layer. At which point I might opt for early retirement and no computers at all.

      I am the original author. I believe since WSL uses Ubuntu that is runs SystemD by default so you won't escape that easily. If you really want to be purist I suppose you could launch a VM of FreeBSD in either platform if your future PC has enough horsepower to take the hit in performance. SuSE is the other one that is on the Windows appstore which also switched to SystemD if I am not mistaken.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  10. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Just wait for them to make some minor improvements, which will be 100% covered by patents.

  11. Remove the spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

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

  12. Windows Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    1. Slow to start a new process
    2. Slow as molasses file system as compared to the Linux file systems.

    1. Re:Windows Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
      Slow to ...

      Is slow really a problem anymore unless you are creating and destroying 10k processes?

    2. Re: Windows Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Inability to properly install / uninstall software without breaking your OS, unlike every system with a package manager since forever. For the same reasons, requires a restart after just about every install...Cross your fingers and hope it boots.

  13. It did exist a time ago. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A combination of msys, mingw, cygwin, etc. was the minimal support of a partial linux over windows. So, it was very slow when many processes were created.

  14. Not Possible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the next update Indiasoft will install a new form of their keylogger. By now they have a nice income stream from NSA and FSB. Both care about your text.

  15. Windows 10: "a nightmare OS" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the parent comment: "Windows 10 is a true nightmare OS, ..."

    Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made.

    Windows 10 shows you ads while you are trying to work. But, at least at present, you may be able to stop the advertising: 7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you, and how to stop them.

  16. Merry Christmas to that by Sla$hPot · · Score: 0

    Can't wait for Microsoft to go all the Unix way. Especially when it comes to UAC.

  17. Microsoft now sees the value of automation by bettodavis · · Score: 1

    In particular for cloud computing, and acknowledges the long matured superiority of Unix(es) in that regard.

    I notice this in the relative ease to use and automatically install stuff on newer Windows running on virtualization environments, at least compared with the older versions, which were cranky and prone to failures when trying to automate software deployments, just because the OS wasn't designed to be fully usable with shells/terminals.

    Of course, Linux and the Unix(es) still are much more stable and usable than Windows in automation environments, but the Windows family is improving.

  18. Too little, too late . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Have had unix tools for 40 years already, no need for a newcomer.

  19. Henry Spencer said it in 1987 by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    1. Re: Henry Spencer said it in 1987 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would be Linux we are talking about, right?

    2. Re:Henry Spencer said it in 1987 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You were thinking: Henry Spencer.

      I was thinking: Henry Spencer.

      That quote seemed so unlikely...

  20. Why? by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Why? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    2. Re:Why? by garcia · · Score: 1

      Those tools were long available in w32/64 versions; I've been using them for at least 15 years when on Windows.

      No, this isn't just adding UNIX tools to the CLI; it's doing what the other major OS players have been doing forever: having a common command line which can do a lot more cross-system work that PowerShell couldn't keep up with.

      Who cares if it's Microsoft? You know you have to deal with their shit now and again; be glad it'll soon be iin a way you're more comfortable doing.

    3. Re:Why? by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

      Just think what would happen if MacOS won the 1980s OS wars instead of Windows?

      I always wondered what might've happened if Taligent had seen the light of day.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
  21. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unix and C are enablers of the Cyber War Domain.

    Algol Mainframes were better than Unix in the 70s.

  22. To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by HalAtWork · · Score: 0

    Linux programs, scripts, solutions, will now be able to interact with Windows and services that are unique to Windows, creating Linux solutions which will depend on Windows to work properly.

    That's the extend part.

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
    1. Re:To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      That's the extend part.

      I see the other direction more likely: once Windows admins get used to Linux programs, the move away from Windows to Linux becomes much easier.

    2. Re:To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Linux programs, scripts, solutions, will now be able to interact with Windows and services that are unique to Windows, creating Linux solutions which will depend on Windows to work properly.

      That's the extend part.

      FYI I am the author of the story. Lately, hosting daemons on SystemD scares me more than running them via services on Windows :-D~ ... ducks.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    3. Re:To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by arth1 · · Score: 1

      FYI I am the author of the story. Lately, hosting daemons on SystemD scares me more than running them via services on Windows :-D~ ... ducks.

      In either case it's hand-editing obsolete MSDOS .INI files and trusting in kitchen sink daemons that run with way too high privilege and can take your entire system down. Not much difference, but then again, the systemd creators grew up with Windows, and did what they were comfortable with.

    4. Re: To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: -1, Troll

      The sad thing is I think you believe your own bullshit. Literally nothing you just claimed is true.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re: To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100% agree. The syatemD people don't know their shit stinks.

    6. Re:To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So use BSD

    7. Re: To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation needed. Prove him wrong or stfu.

    8. Re:To make Linux solutions depend on Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's messed up, modded troll because it contains truth?

  23. A must by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now, the momentum is all about Cloud. And Windows is not the OS of choice on cloud, including on Azure. Windows is kind of useless.

    Presumably, Microsoft will try to offer this as best of both worlds with the hope get an additional 1% market share for Windows on Azure.

  24. Never Microsoft for me... by dbreeze · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't care how much they embrace and extend I'll never spend a penny on Microsoft, or use it for free. I'm old enough to remember how they got their monopoly position. An evil corporation run by evil humans.

    --
    When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
    1. Re:Never Microsoft for me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Give it a rest, gramps. Microsoft is no longer Gates/Ballmer. They have real competition now. So sit back and enjoy watching them grasp at straws.

    2. Re:Never Microsoft for me... by jbn-o · · Score: 1

      Nobody gets proprietary software for free as users pay with their software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software); Microsoft's nonfree software is no exception. No matter how little money Microsoft's nonfree software costs you, you'll end up paying with your freedom if you run it atop a nonfree OS such as Microsoft Windows.

      --
      Digital Citizen
    3. Re: Never Microsoft for me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't call people gramps unless you want to be called that in about 5-10yrs... it makes you a first class asshole.

      plus which, asshole, you're too young to realise that they are playing you for the fool, just as they did countless others before you.

  25. Why doesn't Win have complete Bash + tools? by swb · · Score: 1

    It never made sense to me why Microsoft didn't just toss in Unix tools at some point, like around Server 2003r2 - 2008r2.

    The CLI tools wouldn't have meant less Windows server or server programs sold on its own, it actually would have meant some marginal number of free Unixes not installed because the existing Exchange, IIS or SQL box had the tools to do the job.

    I see a lot of Unix installed because native Windows tools are totally brain damaged and while a Unix instance raises support questions, it's also free and solves the crisis. Later more seems to get installed and less Windows instances as admins and bosses get more confident.

    If MS just had bash and tools installed natively, the door wouldn't be left open to a whole other operating system.

    1. Re:Why doesn't Win have complete Bash + tools? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      PowerShell integrates with WMI and .NET stuff like Active Directory alot easier for stuff like Exchange or SQL Server.

      This is real bash and Ubuntu binaries running, but is mainly for developers as to not loose marketshare to Linux and MacOSX. Not for system admin stuff. However the latest beta make using OpenSSH much easier for system admins too if you need it and no longer need Putty.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    2. Re: Why doesn't Win have complete Bash + tools? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "It never made sense to me why Microsoft didn't just toss in Unix tools at some point, "

      Lock in, validation of their (perceived) competition, indoctrination of the M$ way... worked for them for decades to solidify a monopoly position. Nothing has changed, except the market shifted and now they are trying embrace - extend again.

      Have already seen it work for them... a competent and talented developer came to one of my projects, and we could not for the life of us figure out why he had so much problem reproducing our work, performance was unacceptably low, etc. Finally, we find out... he's running M$ linux win subsystem. Said developer cannot meaningfully contribute, his environment is just not up to the job.

      Success for M$! My project must suck!

    3. Re:Why doesn't Win have complete Bash + tools? by swb · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the "integration" is in the individual commands and the binaries behind them, not in shell script syntax or logic.

      I get that in PowerShell it's object oriented and you can pipeline objects, which is indeed useful for stuff like Exchange where you actually deal in objects like "mailbox", etc.

      But I don't see where there's still not a lot of usefulness for plain-old unix style pipelines and text processing. Powershell is unusually brain damaged in this regard, outright missing many simple Unix text processing utilities or functions or requiring clumsy and wordy syntax to achieve them. Stuff like last, tail, split, grep are all clumsy as fuck to pull off in Powershell.

      IMHO, you could easily run PS binaries in a bash environment and do useful work with the output or at least easier day-day info grabs due to the simplicity of Unix's commands.

  26. Re:The very last thing I want is more bloat and mo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Unix tools have been natively available on Windows since forever. And I don't mean CYGWIN. There is really nothing new here at all.

  27. yay path conversion by SirSlud · · Score: 1

    Also a tool is available called WSLPath to convert Linux to Windows path options

    Thank the lord!

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
    1. Re:yay path conversion by arth1 · · Score: 2

      I wonder how that works with paths like
      /path/to/src/aux.c
      /path/to/con/file1
      /path/to/ST:TNG/s1ep2

      Or where only the case differs:
      /path/to/makefiles/makefile1
      /path/to/Makefiles/Makefile1

      Never mind NFS network paths like
      /net/remotehost/path/to/file

    2. Re:yay path conversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Here's my guess at how Microsoft will solve the middle problem:

      c:\path\to\MAKEFI~1\MAKEFI~1
      c:\path\to\MAKEFI~2\MAKEFI~1

      p.s. I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

    3. Re:yay path conversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      According to TFA:

      Tool to convert Linux paths to Windows-friendly paths: Wslpath is a tool that allows you to convert Linux paths to their Windows equivalent. Here is a quick reference for how you can use the wslpath tool:

      -a force result to absolute path format

      -u translate from a Windows path to a WSL path (default)

      -w translate from a WSL path to a Windows path

      -m translate from a WSL path to a Windows path, with ‘/’ instead of ‘\\’

    4. Re:yay path conversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My eyes! Zee goggles do nothink!

    5. Re: yay path conversion by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      I believe there's additional difference in allowed path characters was the OP's point.

    6. Re: yay path conversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At one point, I somehow got Git for Windows (MinGW?) to make two files where the names only differed by casing. I couldn't figure out why the file was both "checked in" and "new." Despite Windows's case-insensitivity, File Explorer happily showed both copies, and deleting one made Git happy again.

  28. Re:cygwin - the next step by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 0

    A good unix tool.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  29. Re:The very last thing I want is more bloat and mo by mcswell · · Score: 1

    Ok AC, I'll bite: what do you mean? And are you implying that CygWin was superfluous (before the Linux subsystem came).

    There was a brief Linux system for Windows that came out some years--maybe a decade?--ago. My recollection was that it was experimental, buggy, and was removed soon thereafter.

  30. Not evil humans, evil fucks. There's a diff. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not evil humans, evil fucks. There's a diff.

  31. How to uninstall Cygwin by JBMcB · · Score: 2

    1. Right-Click C:\Cygwin64
    2. Select "Delete"
    3. Empty trash

    All done!

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  32. Bash is fairly shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I look back, I'm amazed by how much bash I've written; it has been a very central tool in my computing experience.

    That being said, I think it's a total cockup. Simple things are irritating, and complex tasks that suddenly require a more robust language must be rewritten.

    I only bother with [ba]sh because that's what's installed everywhere. If most other people around you speak a shit language, then you've also got to speak a shit language.

    Also, the maintainer of Bash has a very antiquated, anti-contribution way if maintaining the code base, delivering only tarballs, large patches, and taking credit for improvements.

  33. Re: The very last thing I want is more bloat and m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MSYS Git, perhaps?

  34. Windows is obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Windows is obsolete, that struggle to incorporate Unix into it only proves this.
    Windows is a toy for (rather retarded) children.
    Face it. Windows is dead.

  35. If I wanted to run Unix tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why wouldn't I just run Unix? I wouldn't have booted OS/2 back in the day to run Windows programs.

  36. Hummingbird X for Microsoft Windows. Remember it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hummingbird delivered X windows on Microsoft's platform back in the 1990s.

    It was excellent, may I say.

    The more things change, the more they remain the same.

    ~childo

  37. Sure does IF you make it so - here's how by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    @ echo off
    IF "%1"=="" goto help_display
    IF "%1"=="/?" goto help_display
    IF NOT EXIST %1 goto dir_not_exist
    cd %1
    tree %1
    FOR %%f IN (*.*) DO attrib -r -h -s -a *.* /S
    REM Here, you could use cacls or xcacls from reskit to pull or add NTFS rights as needed also... apk
    FOR %%f IN (*.*) DO DEL /F /S %%f
    goto end :dir_not_exist
    echo The specified directory %1 does not exist.
    goto end :help_display
    echo APKDeltree for Windows 2000/XP/2003 by Alexander Peter Kowalski (c) 2004
    echo.
    echo Usage : APKDeltree [directory] [/?]
    echo [directory] - removes the whole directory
    echo [/?] - displays this screen
    echo. :end
    cd\
    REM switch back to root folder... apk
    rd %1 /s /q
    REM move %1 > nul
    REM Last 2 Lines are for directory/folder removals... apk
    REM EXIT
    REM EXIT Closes DOS terminal console session window

    APK

    P.S.=> This can be put into a deltree.cmd file (32/64-bit) or deltree.bat file (allows compilation into an
    actual .exe w/ a batch compiler) & poof/voila - you have a working "deltree" command.. apk

  38. Fix WSL please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've used Cygwin to add SSH to Windoze boxesfor years, and while a bit clunky it gets the job done. In testing WSL when first announced I was excited to give it a try and then left scratching my head, completely boggled by the fact that WSL is a walled garden that won't allow you to actually manage a Windoze box. I could find no way to access the host filesystem from WSL, much less access administrative utilities, making it a complete waste of time for my purposes. I guess MS decided to move directly to extinguish before bothering with embrace and extended as far as this feature is concerned. Your mileage may vary.

  39. how about the basics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pre-install the coreutils like grep, gawk, sed, find, cut, head, tail for real usefulness on the shell. I don't mind installing gnuwin packages. I despise having only the built-in find to do any text searches.

  40. If W10 didn't spy on you / commit data theft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    then some of these tools could be useful to use. People seem to be forgetting how impressively un-trustworthy Microsoft has become.

  41. Re:Why? - it all goes away due to spying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A lot of this sounds nice, but how can you trust Windows with the forced spying?