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Microsoft Windows 10 Gains Linux/WSL Console Copy and Paste Functionality (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: For better or worse, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) initiative seems to be moving full steam ahead. There are some very respectable distributions available in the Microsoft Store, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Kali to name a few. Not to mention, Microsoft is trying to encourage even more maintainers to submit their distros with a new tool.
Apparently, some Windows 10 users have been clamoring for the ability to copy and paste both from and to WSL consoles -- a reasonable request. Well, as of Insider Build 17643, this is finally possible.
'As of Windows 10 Insider build #17643, you can copy/paste text from/to Linux/WSL Consoles!!! We know that this is a feature MANY of you have been waiting for -- our sincerest thanks for your patience and continued support while we untangled the Console's internals, allowing us to implement this feature. To ensure that we don't break any existing behaviors, you'll need to enable the 'Use Ctrl+Shift+C/V as Copy/Paste' option in the Console 'Options' properties page,' says Rich Turner, Microsoft.
Apparently, some Windows 10 users have been clamoring for the ability to copy and paste both from and to WSL consoles -- a reasonable request. Well, as of Insider Build 17643, this is finally possible.
'As of Windows 10 Insider build #17643, you can copy/paste text from/to Linux/WSL Consoles!!! We know that this is a feature MANY of you have been waiting for -- our sincerest thanks for your patience and continued support while we untangled the Console's internals, allowing us to implement this feature. To ensure that we don't break any existing behaviors, you'll need to enable the 'Use Ctrl+Shift+C/V as Copy/Paste' option in the Console 'Options' properties page,' says Rich Turner, Microsoft.
What is the endgame here? How long before MS considers mandating locked-down bootloaders on all Win 10 machines, even Intel? After all, WSL gives users a "choice" of operating system, so they no longer "need" to boot a different OS.
No thanks to that or WSL. I'd rather run Linux over bare metal and put Windows in a nice, padded, VirtualBox cell. It gets to communicate/update/run when *I* (rarely) allow it to, not whenever the machine is on.
Seems backwards to me. Windows is the shit I need to install and run in a vm on my linux machine from time to time.
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There has always been copy/paste in the WSL.
Highlight text in the console and hit return, that copies.
Right click the mouse does paste.
Even more convenient than all that Ctl-shift nonsense.
Now, if only they would put a real Linux kernel under their OS so that the many things that do not work in WSL would work. Core dumps for example.
not on servers and not in the EU
It's been unreliable for well over a decade. A friend worked on the team that looked into the problem in 2007, but he was laid-off since they made the decision to not even try to fix this problem. Sucks that it just stops working so often. We need copy paste.
Iâ(TM)ve been using WSL for ages and I cut and paste from it constantly. Maybe Iâ(TM)m doing it wrong?
if there even is one, is to offer a "feature" to monolithic corporations where Linux already exists as a second class citizen. typically these companies already pay a license fee for redhat/suse/Oracle linux and are addicted to consolidation. Directors/managers at these companies have zero Linux experience, but see value in consolidating anything and everything inside a windows world. In the end, "no one ever got fired for buying windows" is going to once again save the bacon of whomever inherits the train-wreck of Linux administrators trying to do their jobs in windows, and Microsofts fickle habit of ditching new ideas about eight years after they fail to generate appreciable revenue.
there is no "embrace extend extinguish" here because Microsoft is competing with something not only free, but more powerful than the OS its already offering. Much like Comcast and their bundled netflix, all MS can do is try to catch up to the money train and hope this linux support at least grants them some cloud customers.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It took them nearly a year before their phone got it, after their phone system was first released October 2010.
And, why would you want to run a high performance OS virtualized on a bloated OS when you can virtualize the bloated OS on top of the high performance OS that has provided this ability for years?
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If you want to run Linux, then run Linux, no one in their right mind is going to run Linux on top of Windows. Running Linux on top of Windows is buying a broken down shack of a house, that's falling apart, and loading it with excellent equipment and technology. If you want to use Linux, then run Linux as your base OS and run Windows in a VM, which actually makes sense, instead of trying to use an excellent OS on top of a broken, 1/2 functional bucket of crap.
This company is really committed to comp.sci. advancement!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Last time I heard copy & paste was not implemented was on the early iOS versions.
I'm fucking impressed, I tell you. FUCKING IMPRESSED.
Technical excellence at its best,
I guarantee they will be mucking around with the memory the linux VM uses.
All the structures and kernel layout is there and easy to inspect if you know how to dive through raw memory. I envision a few things happening.
1. Storing all encryption keys loaded into ram inside the linux VM. Send those to Microsoft for the NSA to intercept. /bin and /usr/bin is compiled from scratch different checksums on each machine depending on use flags and processor.
2. Detecting the login prompt and harvesting the keyboard input since people reuse passwords.
3. It's possible to slightly corrupt memory in known places to make linux unstable and look bad to the end user.
4. NSA already had MD5/SHA checksums of various binaries on linux to attempt to detect the distro, now Microsoft is enforcing a certain system image and memory layout. It's not like you are running Gentoo where everything in
5. It's possible to modify memory and inject processes, kernel modules, network traffic, disc traffic, or flash harddrive firmware with backdoors that used to require JTAG access. Windows from a VM doesn't have direct hardware access, they only need you to run windows once on the bare metal to telemetry your hardware ID's and firmware revisions using undocumented vendor-specific calls.
My main hunch is this is about harvesting data from linux and less about trying to help users. They want to backdoor your hardware by getting you to run windows at a lower level where the secret shit it does is less likely to be detected. Network cards firmware can be rewritten, harddrive firmware (harddrives run ARM Cortex CPU's and their own OS), and bios/cpu microcode.
This should be viewed a *HUGE* security breach since we can't audit what windows is doing in the background. They even encrypt the telemetry with assymetric keys so you can't inspect it. This seems more like an Exfil operation all day long.
How long before MS considers mandating locked-down bootloaders on all Win 10 machines, even Intel?
Are you sure that they don't already require this because I have been copying and pasting to the WSL console for the past year. The only new thing that they seem to be adding is that you can do it with the usual windows keys instead of using the right mouse button for pasting from Windows->Linux or selecting with the mouse and Ctrl+C for pasting from Linux->Windows. Copy and paste is not a new feature.
In fact cygwin terminals, COM terminals, Xterms all copy/paste, but with annoyingly different key combinations. Control-X, /Control-V, shift-ins/control-ins, middle mouse click .... But in theory the text gets copied.
Anyone migrating from Cygwin to access local Windows machine to WSL? Any special reason to use WSL over cygwin?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is Microsoft really pushing it now, making sure the IT departments will notice?
I am very much afraid that the IT department, where I work, will try to push it to get rid of all the virtual Linux installations we have on our desktops.
Microsoft's Windows is a toy.
For rather retarded kids.
Face it already.
if i happen to have an external disk partition or even another drive inside the PC with a Linux partition, windows would offer to format it and i would always have to click cancel or close, god damn windows thinks it has to be the only operating system allowed on a PC, it wont be friendly and allow another OS live beside it, so when i boot to windows i am always on the watch as to what it wants to do to other disk partitions and drives
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
do please break the existing behaviour of "update and shutdown" and the annoying "please wait while we apply updates" followed by "we couldn't complete the updates undoing changes" at startup. thanks!
Who wouldâ(TM)ve thought copy and paste would be a killer feature! Ha!
Iâ(TM)ll stick with Linux but I think this might help attract some windows people to Linux.
in just a short time MS could rebuild Windows 11 as a desktop environment sitting on top of Linux.
The user would be none the wiser, but so much better off.
Go well
because the future is simply a browser, I am already approaching that point as a developer. I don't really care what OS is underneath the browser, and I doubt anyone will in 5 years time either. Even on servers, most work with be 'serverless' and only people like Amazon and Microsoft will care what OS is running on the server systems running the micro-services, likely whatever costs the least dollars per watt. Both Linux and Windows and MacOS will all just shrink into a thin layer beneath a browser soon enough.
It uses the same method used for command prompts in Windows. This just adds ctrl-c/v support.
makes those fabulous copy pasta stackoverflow abusers that much less likely to make their own mistakes while using someone elses solution to a problem they don't fully understand.
shittiots.
WSL is not a virtual machine running Linux, in fact it's not Linux at all. Linux is a kernel. People think of distributions built around the Linux kernel as being Linux, but you can run other kernels with the same tools. Depending on your objectives and kernel choice, you can get very different or practically identical functionality while still not technically running Linux. That's all WSL is; it is a bundle of tools associated with Linux distributions but running on the Microsoft Windows kernel instead.
Your concerns about Windows accessing the Linux RAM don't make any sense in regards to WSL because it isn't a separate or hosted OS. Of course Windows has access to WSL memory; WSL is an integrated part of Windows. The point of WSL is to give Windows users less motivation to switch to a different OS, which it does fairly well. Most of the things I want to do in Windows but would normally have to switch to Linux to do are easy to do with WSL, meaning no switch is necessary. Most of the work I get paid to do needs to be done in a Microsoft OS (not always Windows) but it is easier and sometimes massively faster to do some things with the tools that were previously only supported by dual booting or running a VM. WSL makes my job simpler in that respect.
All that said, your concerns make sense in regard to Hyper-V. I think you're wrong about MS's goals there too, but at least it is a debatable topic.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
There seems to be a common misunderstanding that WSL is running a Linux kernel. It isn't. WSL is still running on the Windows kernel. People think of popular Linux distributions as being Linux, but they're only Linux because of the kernel, not because of the tools they're bundling to create a distribution. When you switch to a BSD or Mach kernel using the same tools, you're no longer using Linux, regardless of the programs you're running. That's what WSL is too. It's a distribution's bundled tools running on a different kernel, in this case the Windows kernel.
It'd make more sense to call it Ubuntu on Windows. Really though, it makes more sense for MS to call it "Linux" because that's what people think of when they hear the word. Otherwise you'd have "GNU on Windows" and spend all your time explaining you're talking about running a Linux distribution on Windows without using actual Linux. It's like insisting people use the original meaning of the word "hacker." If you use the word to mean what it really means, then people won't understand what you mean.
I know this post is pretty much off topic, but a lot of people still seem misled by the term and I hope at to help clear up the misconceptions for a couple people.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Windows uses ctrl C + crtl V
Linux uses mouse index click to cut, mouse middle click to paste - it's very fast. The Linux paradigm is so far ahead in terms of efficiency than using ^C and ^V, which is really horrible. I shouldn't have to take my hand off the mouse to cut and paste.
Cygwin allows this on windows, does WSL?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Is that it's GNU/Windows?
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
We found a better way to design Windows, by utilizing the power of Linux mixed with the look, feel, and all the programs you used on MS Windows 10
Debian on BSD! Ubuntu on Windows. Kinky, isn't it?
Exactly. A lot of early comments about WSL was about how "the Linux side is a security hole". Not beyond typical Windows - because the Windows kernel still enforces security permissions even for WSL.
It's really more of a kernel personality - BSD has a Linux personality so it can run Linux binaries easily by emulating its system call behavior. Windows is doing the exact same thing - for WSL, it's emulating how Linux does system calls. And since the Linux system call table is public information (how to make a system call, register contents, etc), all anyone needs to do to add Linux support is emulate those system calls.
And just like Debian on BSD calls itself "GNU/kBSD" to show it's a GNU userspace (versus BSD userspace) on a BSD kernel. So technically this is more "GNU/kWindows" than anything.
Oddly, it's probably the closest to a full POSIX implementation WIndows would ever have - its POSIX implementation back in the day was fairly limited.
The Linux-heads get it wrong.
"The endgame is to marginalize desktop Linux as much as possible."
Why? To prevent the perpetually delayed Year of Linux on the Desktop?
"Sure, they'd love to lock down the hardware farther..."
LOLwhut? Secure boot does not do what you think it does.
"Back-end Linux is no longer a threat to them - if only because they've already lost that battle."
This statement contains an internal contradiction. Either the first phrase could be true, or the second, but they cannot both be true.
"...anything that marginalizes the Windows desktop stands a chance of harming the cash cow that makes the rest of their business work."
Ummm, you were correct to mention Azure, but then you lost that thread of logic and went back to desktop thinking. If you are talking about Office, and I assume you are, then the asset that Microsoft most views as strategic is Office 365. Desktop Office is still a major cash cow and well worth protecting, but Microsoft views Office 365 as the future.
Your business analysis of Microsoft sucks balls. Try harder, or go into a different line of business.
Hey, they can cut and paste! Woo hoo. Such an achievement.
How about updating your cryptography to something recent? Never mind. Microsoft will always suck until they make vacuum cleaners. Then it'll blow.