Microsoft Is Making the Windows Command Line a Lot Better (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Over the last few years, Microsoft has been working to improve the Windows console. Console windows now maximize properly, for example. In the olden days, hitting maximize would make the window taller but not wider. Today, the action will fill the whole screen, just like any other window. Especially motivated by the Windows subsystem for Linux, the console in Windows 10 supports 16 million colors and VT escape sequences, enabling much richer console output than has traditionally been possible on Windows.

Microsoft is working to build a better console for Windows, one that we hope will open the door to the same flexibility and capabilities that Unix users have enjoyed for more than 40 years. The APIs seem to be in the latest Windows 10 Insider builds, though documentation is a little scarce for now. The command-line team is publishing a series of blog posts describing the history of the Windows command-line, and how the operating system's console works. The big reveal of the new API is coming soon, and with this, Windows should finally be able to have reliable, effective tabbed consoles, with emoji support, rich Unicode, and all the other things that the Windows console doesn't do... yet.

Comments

As usual, they are decades late

[gweihir]

Still, it seems MS can eventually recognize what works. This will give all those GUI-only IT "experts" fits, of course.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[DickBreath]

But will there still be any Windows developers left?

Oh, well. As long as edlin still works.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Desler]

This will give all those GUI-only IT "experts" fits, of course.

Why? For what possible reason would they even care?

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[mysidia]

Next I would like to see Microsoft make CLI versions of all the traditional windows management tools, and
then for legacy GUI tools; Group Policy Editor, Active Directory Users and Computers, Domains And Trusts, Sites and Services.... make the traditional GUIs Read-Only solely for display and reporting

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[postbigbang]

They're not decades late, they chose to be insular and keep things comparatively stupid. Now a few UI folks can fix it, having spent decades fixing the rest of their stuff.

Microsoft is about revenue, never make a mistake thinking there's an ounce of altruism in what Microsoft is, does, or plans.

If you want pointers to the body count, let me know. Or if the SCO-Linux-Kernel debacle wasn't enough, let's just say that they don't do UX for free...

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Anonymous Coward]

You should really look into PowerShell, doubly so on Server.

Microsoft has something called the Common Engineering Criteria which lays out a set of requirements in order to ship something... as far back as 2011 (I think) there was a requirement that any administrative action you can do with the UI, there must be a cmdline option, with heavy emphasis on PowerShell. The exclusion to this is for pre-existing UI. Add/change a feature, cmdline equivalent is required, leave an older thing untouched in next release, it doesn't require touching.

Of course half of the exposed options were just WMI endpoints, which can be tweaked via PS even if no official cmdlets were created.

Source: Former MS employee.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Anonymous Coward]

powershell has some of the worse syntax I've ever seen in scripting. Way too much punctuation, object name lengths are too long, oh, and it's slow as fuck.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[jlowery]

Amen, Brother. How on earth do they let such bad ideas percolate to the end user? I still haven't forgiven them for The Registry: want to change an operating system setting? Just remember this simple GUID: 229G-A17B-CC2E-82DD-E1AF-...

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Dutch Gun]

I'm a largely GUI-centric dev on Windows, but I think that's because Windows tends to work that way, and consequently has a lot of really nice GUI-based tools. For instance, there are nice GitHub desktop clients for Mac and Windows. But as for Linux? Nope - command-line only. So, when I work in Linux, I just sort of assume I have to keep various terminal windows open all the time, and that I'll probably be writing more scripts than when using Windows or Mac. It's just sort of the way things are done.

I'm comfortable working either way. However, I will say that I vastly prefer Bash to Powershell for CLI scripting. Bash is simple and fairly easy to pick up, if a bit on the clunky side. Powershell feels a bit over-engineered and overly-complex even when doing fairly simple things, and I've never bothered investing the time to really understand it all that deeply. So, I'm very happy about Linux tools, including Bash and various other CLI utilities, being ported to Windows. Because no matter how complete a GUI-based solution you have, there are almost always going to be times when you need to drop back to CLI tools if you're doing something outside of the GUI tool's expectations.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Microsoft was late to the GUI party. When they finally got there they might have thought, "we already have a shell for those who want it, but really Windows is the future. The DOS prompt is yesterday's news."

Apple too did something of a reversal on that, but from the opposite direction. They used to brag, actually brag that MacOS didn't have a command prompt. Not a-one! It was their way of saying, "GUI is the future and we aren't chained to the past." Then of course they did a brain transplant with NeXT, which brought along a command shell almost as an afterthought.

And even considering all that, yes, Microsoft was very, very late in making some command shell enhancements. However I suspect that the Linux Subsystem might have given them some encouragement? By way of contrast, and so very In Your Face for the Windows development team?

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[DamnOregonian]

I thought I was a reasonably intelligent human until I encountered PowerShell. 5 minutes with it, and I feel retarded. I haven't determined if it's because I'm too stupid to digest that syntax, if my brain cells are forcefully refusing to, or they're outright committing ritual suicide.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[bursch-X]

macOS is a full blown UNIX. How is their CLI an afterthought? There's actually a lot of stuff you can do in Terminal that you can't do via the GUI. Like creating bootable USB stick installers for macOS. Also lots of admin only settings available there.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Daltorak]

Next I would like to see Microsoft make CLI versions of all the traditional windows management tools, and then for legacy GUI tools

Your wish has been granted.... like.... nine years ago. Where've you been, dude and/or dudette? As a random example: Microsoft added Managed Service Accounts in 2008 R2, and you can see a "Managed Service Accounts" folder in AD Users and Computers, but you cannot create or edit them there. You -must- do it through Powershell using New-ADServiceAccount. Here's a blog post from 2009 on the subject.

Pretty much the only parts of Windows you can't configure through the command prompt, are some of the GUI elements. For example, there is no way to change what is pinned to the taskbar, nor can you programmatically set whether a tray icon will always be visible or not. Folks at Microsoft have said that this limitation is intended to protect the user from app installers that inject themselves all over the place. Setting crucial visual things like display resolution is also disallowed (except on Server Core, where there is no GUI to do this).

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft prefers "intentionally bad + obtuse" to drawing on well-established conventions or legacy. Anything that hampers compatibility and forces you to do it the "Microsoft Way" is good. Many examples like yours and the previous poster.

Case insensitivity, using backslash as the directory separator, etc.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Darinbob]

No matter how you do your job, someone will eventually walk past and say that you're doing it wrong.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Voyager529]

Still, it seems MS can eventually recognize what works. This will give all those GUI-only IT "experts" fits, of course.

As one of those people likely to be maligned as one of those "GUI-only IT 'experts'", I'll throw a few quick thoughts out there for your consideration.

First off, CLI doesn't always scale down. Making a hundred users in a domain environment? Sure, that needs to be scripted. Making just one? in most cases, quicker in a GUI environment.

Next, GUIs make things discoverable. using "/?" and man pages is a start, but the results of things aren't always readily obvious; GUIs can better reflect this. Discoverability is also helpful in scenarios where a task is done once every four months - recently enough to generally-remember it, long ago enough to forget the precise syntax. StackOverflow can help with that, but if lookup time is factored into the time entering the command, it's basically-impossible to make the time saving argument.

Finally, at least for myself personally, I don't administer the same exact set of systems all day, every day. I deal with everybody's systems. Some run Hyper-V, others VMWare, some have Sonicwalls, others have Barracudas or SOHO routers. Supporting end users means I need a functional understanding of their software, meaning I can somewhat-interact with a number of pieces of software specific to law firms, doctor's offices, restaurants, retail establishments, and others. GUIs (well-done ones, anyway) provide cues so I can generally figure things out upon first use if I know the underlying concepts. CLI syntax isn't as easy to pick up, especially in situations where the goal is to pick it up fast.

Sometimes, GUI is the right tool for the job, and the people that administer them are dealing with many, many different kinds of systems. It doesn't make them dumb (though there are PLENTY of dumb ones), any more than knowing how to use a CLI doesn't inherently make one smart.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Darinbob]

I don't know Powershell, but when I've encountered it I've been left with the impression that it's designed more as a programming language that you write while in an editor or IDE, with typing commands in from a command line prompt was a very late afterthought.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[FaxeTheCat]

MacOS became Unix with MacOS X. Up to and including version 9 it was not Unix.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Dutch Gun]

For instance, there are nice GitHub desktop clients for Mac and Windows. But as for Linux? Nope - command-line only.

You're talking out of your ass.

(lists of 3rd party clients)

A bit off-topic, but to clarify, I meant an official desktop client from GitHub the company, but didn't say that explicitly. You're correct, of course, that there are plenty of third-party clients that work across all OSes. I've been meaning to look at GitKracken at some point.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[gweihir]

There is nothing wrong with using a GUI when it is efficient for the task at hand. There is a lot wrong with calling yourself an "IT expert" when you cannot use or are severely limited on the command line.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[gweihir]

And sometimes they will be right. Your point?

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[sjames]

The big caviat though is I'll bet a CLI guy has a better chance of success when GUI is the right tool than a GUI guy does if CLI is the right (or only) tool.

Learning CLI is well worth it.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Darinbob]

They could be right, doesn't mean they're not annoying.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[nazsco]

There a few IT people that write IT software.

But honest question: anyone who uses windows at this time, are still using microsoft shells? like cmd and powershell?

The very first thing I install on windows machines is the nicely packaged git-shell stuff (NOT the github client). It will give me bash native on windows, almost better (or should I say, more practical) than cygwin.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[datavirtue]

...or if you are an adult and want repeatable processes that can filter through change control and can be stored in a version control system.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[datavirtue]

No. Developers (.NET etc..) are all jazzed up about Linux so they are giving it to them. Mind you, these are developers who don't have to manage the platform that runs their code and they are for some reason poking their nose into what runs their code ("are these Linux servers" "Yes, but why do you care?"). Who cares...develop software...throw it over the wall to the people who run it...they can run it how they see fit. Really annoying.

This industry has completely lost its sanity. I'm in a .NET shop now that is going balls to the wall Linux. No adults are in charge.

Personally I would write in .NET Core and try to discover the best place to run the code--objectively. No one wants to hear that shit.

OpenStack and CloundFoundry remove a ton of bullshit related to software deployment and scaling. Instead people are fucking with Ansible trying to wire all this up themselves--thinking they are blazing trails. Welcome to the modern enterprise.

I'm currently looking into starting a construction company focused on waste management. This "IT" industry is just depressing anymore.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[jaa101]

MaxOS X is a completely different OS from all the MacOSes that came before. CLI is not an afterthought for MacOS X. Next you'll be saying that pre-emptive multitasking is an afterthought in Windows because it was only introduced with WinNT.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Ed Avis]

Recent WIndows versions no longer include EDLIN. It was there in NT 4.0 but is missing in Windows 10, so must have been dropped somewhere along the way.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[phantomfive]

Now a few UI folks can fix it, having spent decades fixing the rest of their stuff.

It's more than a UI problem, that's not a normal window. It's like some kind of bizarre DOS emulator, built for windows95 which requires (required) the screen to be a specific width. The source code is so ugly and messed up, no one dared to touch it. But now someone seems to have been working at it for a year or two, and they're cleaning up the code without breaking things (hopefully).

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[FaxeTheCat]

I simply stated the same thay you do, that MacOS X is fundamentally different from the previous versions.

Your speculations on what I wil say next is just silly.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[LinuxIsGarbage]

EDLIN is a 16 bit DOS program. Only 32 bit versions of Windows include the ability to run 16 bit DOS applications. As I recall with Windows 10, and possibly Windows 8, 16 bit capability must be separately enabled. It's not available at all on 64 bit versions of Windows.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[thegarbz]

Late for whom? People who cared about the command line didn't use the command line, they used PowerShell. There was zero incentive to change anything, and lots of effort required to do it.

The commandline is a curious throwback shoehorned into Windows internals via a nonstandard process which is why it is able to be rendered even when the GUI breaks down in safe mode, which is why it is unable to be maximised, or one from TFA I never knew about, the process drawing the window crashing will cause the system to bluescreen.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[thegarbz]

MaxOS X is a completely different OS from all the MacOSes that came before. CLI is not an afterthought for MacOS X.

No one said it was. Maybe re-read the thread. Unless you think MacOS X predates NeXT...

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[comodoro]

Thank you for the comment. I absolutely feel this way, but strangely I mostly read positive or at least neutral things about that piece of software. I rather think about it as piece of excrement.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[tigersha]

Exactly. I use MacOS every days and spend half my life in iTerm. It is not even remotely an afterthought

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[DickBreath]

Wait. So you mean, when I get around to upgrading to XP that there won't be EDLIN?

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

Maybe, but piping objects between scripts is fucking amazing.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

GUIs don't intrinsically make things more discoverable. Only GUIs specifically designed for discoverability.

If you think making edits in the registry or through Group Policy are discoverable, you're crazy. Even having different apps for different things (essentially all admin tools except MMC) tanks discoverability. Add to that a schemaless registry and scattered policy docs, and your GUI discoverability is going to essentially rely on Google to perform the discovery.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

OS X learned this lesson well. Simple GUIs, with advanced features only available from CLI. Windows tries to keep dumping more and more crap into the GUIs, until they are bloated and nigh unusable.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

PowerShell has all the same problems as every other CLI Windows app.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[xSauronx]

RE > But honest question: anyone who uses windows at this time, are still using microsoft shells? like cmd and powershell?

yes, i live in powershell. its very robust and functional as well as being well supported by microsoft and the windows powershell community. i cannot speak to powershell CORE, which is the cross platform edition. it has a lot of limitations in what is available compared to v5 that I use because it is based on .NET core. the powershell window in win 7 is not great -- i have to still use 7 at work for a little longer. it is much better in windows 10, based on this article still does not have some features *nix users would be accustomed to.

There are surely still too-many gui-only window admins, but that is probably more likely to be the case with SMB and MSP admins than it is medium or enterprise admins -- you can automate a lot of work and tasks in windows with powershell or group policies. You can do a lot of searching and reporting pretty easily as well once you get the data you want to work with. powershell is sort of great (if you are on v4 or higher). I've got dozens and dozens of scripts for monitoring services, processes, doing routine work, reporting on various events/data/user info, working with the device manager--all sorts of things.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[xSauronx]

there are still some gui tools and powershell components that are not up to part, but really, powershell is where its at. anyone in the *nix world that is complaining about it, or still assuming the windows CLI is garbage, is really not very knowledgeable about what is available. I live in powershell for AD work, reporting events, moving files, monitoring services, manipulating data, comparing data....it can do almost anything these days. some people may not love the syntax, but i like that its verbose (usually, some of the cmdlets are kinda stupid long) because i can see it and have some damn idea of what the cmdlet is for.

I support an app that uses a ton of javascript -- their syntax/apis/functions are not bad, but they are not that obvious in what they are doing without some research. powershell is much clearer.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[xSauronx]

it is pretty great for one-off scripts at the CLI, depending on your needs, because you can pipe between cmdlets to do a lot of work in a line or two. that being said, for bulk work you will want to dig into loops and functions with the ISE or VSCode or something as piping does not perform very well for large amounts of objects. i could mirror a user group access for just their AD finance groups to someone else with something like this (though it is probably a little bit off)

get-adgroup daveW | where-object {$_.name -like "*finance*"} | add-adgroupmember susanL

or remove someone with something like this

foreach ($group in (get-adgroup -filter {name -like "*human resources*"}) { remove-adgroupmember -identity $_ -members tanyaM -confirm:$false }

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

GitKracken is great, but I'm skeptical if it's worth an annual subscription. I use it primarily to stage parts of files, but I still end up on the command line a lot. Especially because I work on lots of small projects (Node.js), the slow startup time is a killer.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[reanjr]

OS X Terminal is easily one the best terminal apps in existance. Linux is only starting to catch up to some features (reflow is sick). Most definitely not an afterthought.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[ausekilis]

I agree wholeheartedly. the *Nix world has a focus on multiple simple tools that can be combined in interesting ways to do what you need. Think data piping, xargs, and as someone else mentioned - string operations. Because of these we have a lot of short commands that do simple things "ls" , "cd", "sed", "grep", and so on.

Microsoft, on the other hand, opted to nest things in obscure objects. So now you have java-namespace-like objects to do tasks. Its not editing a configuration file, it's instantiating a specific class to handle some configuration setting - likely in the registry somewhere. The result is long-ass commands to do really simple things and having to remember which obscure class of the .NET component tree you need to invoke to start the toaster.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[strikethree]

I thought I was a reasonably intelligent human until I encountered PowerShell. 5 minutes with it, and I feel retarded. I haven't determined if it's because I'm too stupid to digest that syntax, if my brain cells are forcefully refusing to, or they're outright committing ritual suicide.

It is because they do not explain what is REALLY important about PowerShell. You need to understand the various layers that it operates on and in what order for it to be useful. In short, the abstraction is hidden from you but it is VERY relevant to using PowerShell coherently. Are you operating on an object and if so, what is it attached to? You can't see. Some of it is WMI, others are C#/.Net libraries.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Shirley Marquez]

XP is a 32 bit version of Windows. There is a 64 bit version of XP, but because of poor compatibility and driver support very few people run it. Your 16 bit programs will run just fine on XP.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[gweihir]

Did I anywhere say anything about "like" or "dislike"? I do not think so. What about you learn to read?

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[thegarbz]

... care to list them? Because it has none of the problems in the context of the change MS is currently making to the commandline. It sounds like you're wishing for something that isn't being discussed.

Re: As usual, they are decades late

[bursch-X]

Ah, terminology. Mac OS is the new name given to the 8th version of what was hitherto known as simply System 6/7. Then came Rhapsody (a Mac OS themed OPENSTEP), then Mac OS X. Then Tim Cooke decided to rename Mac OS X into macOS (mind the missing space and the lower/uppercase mix). So when I said macOS I didn't mean Mac OS. Also Mac OS X has only been a certified UNIX since 10.5 I believe. Before that it was only a UNIX derivative.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, but you can't do NET SEND /DOMAIN "POOP EMOJI" on your last day because Win32 consoles run in CSRSS and that only supports legacy Ansi code pages and has rather poor Unicode support. Well not until now where the console will get "emoji support, rich Unicode, and all the other things that the Windows console doesn't do".

It's actually pretty funny someone at MS is going to have to brain surgery on CSRSS.exe to make it support 'emojis and rich Unicode' for killer applications like this.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[gweihir]

PowerShell is a command line. Not a good one, but its nature is not in dispute.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[Ed Avis]

Ah, of course you're right. Microsoft ported lots of the classic DOS utilities to native Windows versions, including the command prompt itself (COMMAND.COM became CMD.EXE) but porting EDLIN would have been a step too far. You can blame AMD for not including a way to go back from V86 mode to x86_64 mode, I think.

Re:As usual, they are decades late

[KingBenny]

they never should have let them anywhere near to linux is it too late for a restraining order before it becoms linux with a windows flavoured desktop SOLD for €150 a copy ? https://www.quora.com/Why-do-n...

what

[nnet]

why does a text console need emoji support?

Re: what

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell else do you expect a millenial to be able to figure it out?

Re:what

[DickBreath]

Emojis are simply a side effect of supporting Unicode characters -- at long last.

Now Windows Console will support foreign languages.

With bigger and bigger Unicode character sets, every font will not only have emojis, and various human languages, it could also eventually have a set of font glyphs for every possible 8x8 cell grid. (That's only 2^64 characters extra in each font!) Then you could use these font characters to display text and graphics like it is 1980 again! That would make Windows Console great (again).

Re:what

[Desler]

So it can do things that Slashdot still can't. The irony will probably be lost on the people acting smug over this being "late".

Re:what

[Joe_Dragon]

emoji is microsoft's systemd

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

So it can do things that Slashdot still can't. The irony will probably be lost on the people acting smug over this being "late".

It's not irony. Anyone using emojis on the command line should be summarily shot in the head and their corpse fed to dogs.

Re:what

[jdavidb]

It would actually be helpful for some screen-based readers I'd like to make that would scrape certain forums.

Re:what

[Desler]

Another aspie missing the point. Emoji support would come for free if Slashdot could even properly support UTF-8. You know a thing most websites have supported for years and years if not more than a decade.

Re:what

[Desler]

It's not about emojis. It's about Slashdot being unable to handle UTF-8 properly despite most other websites being able to support it for nearly a decade.

Re:what

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

So you can read your $SERVER log file when some user sent an emoji and crashed it.

You could always hexdump the file and then search on google, but one is much faster than the other.

Re:what

[Rockoon]

That is why shashdot doesnt support utf-8. We dont want to see your ascii art, or your smiley faces, or all the other ways that you are just a script kiddie.

Re:what

[DickBreath]

> Anyone using emojis on the command line should be summarily shot in the head and their corpse fed to dogs.

I have a worse punishment. I think anyone using emojis on Windows Console should be forced to use the Windows OS.

Re:what

[ConceptJunkie]

We dont want to see your ascii art, or your smiley faces, or all the other ways that you are just a script kiddie.

And the trade-off is simply that your post looks like a Jackson Pollack painting if you aren't using pure ASCII. How many posts on /, look like line noise whenever there's an apostrophe? How does this happen and why? Why is ./ the only site where this happens.

Re:what

[tender-matser]

With bigger and bigger Unicode character sets, every font will not only have emojis, and various human languages

That's not how it works. You use different fonts for different scripts -- no need for eg. a cyrillic font to support hebrew. That's how every program that displays text (browsers, editors) works.

As to emoji and other "non-traditional" characters in a terminal emulator, you could either give up on monospace fonts & cursor-addressability (ie act as a dumb terminal), or display some replacement characters (and show the real widgets when the user hovers the mouse over them). The unicode consortium has long abandoned any pretension to sanity so now we have "woman + school => female teacher" and skin color character modifiers.

it could also eventually have a set of font glyphs for every possible 8x8 cell grid. (That's only 2^64 characters extra in each font!) Then you could use these font characters to display text and graphics like it is 1980 again!

I don't know about you, but my fonts were 8x16, not 8x8 grids. And you were able to change the character slots dynamically, no need of huge character tables. That's how that cute arrow cursor was working in FreeBSD's VGA console.

bash?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can only hope.

can I fireup putty and login to an windows server?

[Joe_Dragon]

can I fireup putty and login to an windows server? or wait will I need to buy server 2019 to get this server side?

Did they buy JPSoft?

[qzzpjs]

The best way to make CMD livable is to install Take Command. I've been using it since it was called 4DOS back in the pre-Windows days. It has always provided tab filename completion, history, etc (all those nice things in bash) and a much larger command set.

Re:Did they buy JPSoft?

[malxau]

I've been working on a free alternative (see http://www.malsmith.net/yori/). I won't be able to replicate all of bash, but there's plenty of nice things that can be incorporated into a native Windows shell, and it's sure keeping me busy.

Re:Did they buy JPSoft?

[Daltorak]

The best way to make CMD livable is to install Take Command. I've been using it since it was called 4DOS back in the pre-Windows days. It has always provided tab filename completion, history, etc (all those nice things in bash) and a much larger command set.

Why are you still using CMD in 2018? Why should anyone pay $100 per computer for the closed-source, proprietary Take Command when they could learn Powershell instead? Powershell has full Intellisense nowadays, access to the full .NET Framework library, comprehensive built-in documentation, and thousands of commands that can reach into every part of the system. Plus Powershell is an open-source Github project nowadays. Pair it with the open-source ConEmu for a wicked-good, fully configurable console environment.

Re:Did they buy JPSoft?

[phantomfive]

when they could learn Powershell instead? Powershell has full Intellisense nowadays, access to the full .NET Framework library, comprehensive built-in documentation, and thousands of commands that can reach into every part of the system.

Powershell redirect < doesn't work and redirect > can corrupt your files. Furthermore creating new CLI programs that integrate into the Powershell system is a pain. Powershell is great for administering Windows tools, but other than that, it's kind of crap.

Re: Did they buy JPSoft?

[reanjr]

I call bullshit on "full intellisense". I wrote a three-line ps1 script the other day with several inline evaluations and property references and not a goddamn thing came up from intellisense.

Maybe there's intellisense, but nowhere near "full" intellisense.

Re: Did they buy JPSoft?

[reanjr]

Windows CLI has supported history and tab completion for decades, at least. If that's your selling point, may I suggest you periodically (say, once every decade) check out the alternatives.

Powershell is powerfull

[Camel Pilot]

But way too verbose and complex... sorta like a java version of bash.

Re:Powershell is powerfull

[DickBreath]

Isn't it already a C# version?

Re:Powershell is powerfull

[Desler]

Then why not use the command aliases that are much shorter?

Re:Powershell is powerfull

[Tablizer]

MS has too many ways to script OS-related stuff. They have the command window, power-shell and there are different-but-similar API's and languages they support (or half support).

Choice can be good, but it can also confuse and dilute resources. I don't want to have to learn others' 13 different ways of Windows scripting (guestimate). I can control what I use (if not dictated by the shop), but not what others use to write scripts in. Thus, it looks like I'll have to learn all 13. (I'm an app-dev, not a sys admin.) #IdontGeddit

Re:Powershell is powerfull

[phantomfive]

MS has too many ways to script OS-related stuff. They have the command window, power-shell and there are different-but-similar API's and languages they support (or half support). Choice can be good, but it can also confuse and dilute resources

Not only that, every time I have to write scripts in DOS cmd, I would rather stab myself with a fork.

Re:Powershell is powerfull

[rastos1]

Is it still the case, that scripts have to be signed with code signing certificate before they can be run? Some time ago I wrote a small app. It needed an installation that adjusted one text file, copied the binaries and created a registry entry. Those actions depended on the installation path, so I thought "well, let's create a small powershell script that does that" - and I was sorely disappointed that I had to get a code signing certificate in order to get the powershell script working on end-user's system. wtf.

Re: Powershell is powerfull

[pinkushun]

The Verb-Noun naming convention for your functions is intolerable.

Re: Powershell is powerfull

[reanjr]

You may want to stear clear of Linux, where there are hundreds more ways to do everything.

Re: Powershell is powerfull

[reanjr]

As devops engineer, I've never felt the desire to have a Python REPL available. Frankly, no REPL is signicantly better than Bash with readline, and nothing beats pipes for interoperability. Pipes are the one form of IPC anyone can easily get to work with Bash, Python, Javascript, Perl, Ruby, C, C++, Go, Rust, etc.

Re: Powershell is powerfull

[reanjr]

Until MS abandons this paradigm in a couple years when CLI is no longer the "new" hotness.

Re: Powershell is powerfull

[reanjr]

PowerShell has always come with built-in aliases to make the environment usable for Unix/GNU users.

Impressive

[110010001000]

I like the emoji support for the command line. It was sorely missed!

Re:Impressive

[DickBreath]

Bring back the blue scream of death which is even more sorely mist.

Re:Impressive

[thegreatbob]

What, you weren't satisfied with the two ASCII smiley faces?

Re:Impressive

[f3rret]

Assuming you want it to happen on a Hyper-V VM, do:

  Debug-VM -Name "VM Name" -InjectNonMaskableInterrupt -ComputerName Hostname

Re:Impressive

[f3rret]

Assuming you want it to happen on a Hyper-V VM, do:

  Debug-VM -Name "VM Name" -InjectNonMaskableInterrupt -ComputerName Hostname

Also fun fact: the Debug-VM cmdlet takes input from pipeline.

So if you have a big Hyper-V environment you can do Get-VM | Debug-VM -InjectNonMaskableInterrupt on your host.
Big fun.

So why is Microsoft doing this?

[mykepredko]

Is it to keep up with the Linux's terminals, provide better displaying or Linux apps or establish bragging rights on who has the best console interface?

When I RFTA, they even note that while Unix/Linux is file based (which makes a "terminal" console more appropriate) Windows is object based with dialog based apps providing access to the system and utilities. I do quite a bit of development on Windows (7) and I really don't find that I need to access the system via the "MSDOS Prompt" console and, when I do, it's adequate for my needs.

So, while I would have liked a better console for MS-DOS 3.x and OS/2 1.x, I really don't see the need for revamping it for Windows 10 and beyond.

As for running Linux apps on Windows 10: I would rather suffer the minor inconvenience of turning 45 degrees to my Linux box rather than the major security risk of Windows 10.

Re:So why is Microsoft doing this?

[Quarters]

1) Because users overwhelmingly want it (based on UserVoice)
2) Apple has stumbled / is stumbling and Microsoft wants to be there with interesting form factor computers and an OS that supports what those people prefer to make jumping ship easier.

Re:So why is Microsoft doing this?

[f3rret]

They're doing it because MS is moving towards GUI less servers, current editions of Windows Server 2016 are "core" by standard, which means they don't install any GUI components.

Re:So why is Microsoft doing this?

[thegarbz]

Which users?

The users who already use powershell?
The users who install bash on Windows?

Certainly not the average user whose interaction with the terminal extends to that black screen that occasionally pops up when the IT administrator runs a script on their computer.

Maybe the BOFH wanted this so the script could then provide the poor user with a very BOFH emoji: U+1F595

On a more serious note this is somewhat at odds with the direction Microsoft has been taking of making Windows 10 more user friendly. Even the control panel was too complex for its users, so it is strange to see the console get any love at all.

Re:So why is Microsoft doing this?

[mykepredko]

I did not know that.

Thank you.

Translation: When we kill Linux as an OS..

[Rick Schumann]

When we take over and kill Linux as a stand-alone OS and make it available only under Windows, at least you'll have a command line window that won't make you cry -- even though your tears of loss over your silly little free 'open source' OS will still be sweet to us. Mark my words, Slashdotters, Miscreant-o-soft has had Linux in it's sights for a while now. Don't say you weren't warned when they lock it out of booting on your hardware.

Re:Translation: When we kill Linux as an OS..

[Rick Schumann]

Put your glasses on, Myopian, you can't see past the end of your own nose. Microsoft wants to be the ONLY OS on the planet, and they've clearly and objectively demonstrated over and over again that they'll go to any lengths, fair, legal, or not, to attain that goal, and Linux is a threat to that hegemony and dominance. Since it's not a company they can do a hostile takeover of, they have to infiltrate the Linux community (done), influence it's development (done), then start 'incorporating' it into their own products (done). Since they have the power and the influence with motherboard and computer manufacturers to dictate what can and cannot boot on any given platform (i.e. 'secure boot' and the certificates required for that to happen) they can effectively lock out any non-Microsoft OS. For the moment Secure Boot can be bypassed, but does anyone really think it'd be that difficult for them to use their money and influence to convince everyone that matters that being able to bypass Secure Boot opens the door to criminal hacking, and should no longer be allowed? You shouldn't, it would be relatively trivial for them to accomplish that, they're one step away from that right now, especially in the wake of all the cybercrime and cyberterrorism happening. After that anyone bypassing Secure Boot would be considered a criminal, arrested and prosecuted for it, and their 'bootleg illegal OS' would be destroyed. Meanwhile Microsoft, in response to complaints from the former Linux community, would simply say "You can run your Linux OS under Windows, you don't need to boot directly to it, and this is for your PROTECTION, you should thank us for keeping you safe!". After that point there's no competition, and they'd have law enforcement, Congress, and PC manufacturers convinced that it's the best way to move forward. Any concerns about 'anti-competitiveness' or 'monopoly' would be responded to with FUD about cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and National Security. There, I've laid out the complete blueprint for you, you really going to try to refute it now? Even a child could see it's not far-fetched at all, considering Microsofts' track record, especially lately.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT YEAR IS IT?!?!

Re:wtf

[jlowery]

It's later than you think. And still too early for Microsoft.

Re:wtf

[novakyu]

Year of Linux on Desktop! (Seriously.)

Re:wtf

[datavirtue]

Year of the Linux desktop and it is literally Windows. Cannot stop laughing---think I'm about to lose it.

I still won't use Windows 10

[Joshs922]

As long as it continues to be a SaaS spyware product with forced updates/upgrades, and has an onerous, unacceptable privacy policy that claims the right to access all of my personal data, I don't care if they make it nicer than my favorite desktop Linux distro. I'll never use it.

Re:I still won't use Windows 10

[110010001000]

But then you are missing out on command line emoji support!

Re:I still won't use Windows 10

[Joshs922]

What ever will I do without CLI emojis? And Candy Crush!?!?

Re:I still won't use Windows 10

[thegreatbob]

Except when it's not... silly fly/fade-in animations that make right clicking task bar (and other) entities a nuisance, etc... not saying it's all bad, just that it's far, far from perfect. They ever going to fix that recurring bit where the start menu just randomly stops working for a given user, never to work again until the next forced update or making a fresh user?

Re: I still won't use Windows 10

[bursch-X]

You'll get a sore neck having to tilt your head every time you see a text smiley!

Re:I still won't use Windows 10

[iampiti]

Yep, exactly why I don't like Windows 10 either. It may be a technical marvel but it's ruined by publicity, telemetry, tricking the user into using MS apps and services and so on.

too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Already switched to Linux back when vista came out. These 'improvements' are already polished and refined elsewhere and have been for decades.

If you see someone say anything good about Microsoft, kick them in the genitals. After years of study of human psychology, the human condition, philosophy, philanthropic endevors ecumenical debates the results are in: HUMANS WILL NOT TAKE CORRECTIVE LOGICAL ACTION UNTI YOU THREATEN THEM WITH HARM. This has to do with our natural aversion to new ideas which stems from our flight or fight response. Good ideas which make sense can be presented but rejected and even rejected with prejudice if the mind in question believes that a held belief is under attack the way the animal would react to a physical threat.

So, since we are unable to take the sane step ourselves to get rid of Microsoft we need to take stronger measures that will properly interact with human psychology...so if anyone says anything good about Microsoft, kick them as hard as you can in the genitals, you are doing gods work soldier.

Re:can I fireup putty and login to an windows serv

[Anonymous Coward]

You don’t need the beta builds of Windows 10 even for that. SSH got added in last year.

Don't mess it up, I use it daily

[Trax3001BBS]

I dual boot and because of it my time is off in whatever OS I'm in. DATE and TIME are two commands I use all the time.

- Lost Linux Mint on a Windows update; didn't fix it for a bit, my time was always right.

Re:Don't mess it up, I use it daily

[Trax3001BBS]

You know you can fix that, right?

There is a registry key to tell Windows to use UTC, or use 'timedatectl set-local-rtc 1' to tell Linux to set the hwclock to local time.

No I didn't know it could be fixed, quick search on your reply looks like I can fix it.
Thank you.

X11

[thegreatbob]

I know a lot of people regard X11 as a bit of a dinosaur, but for forwarding a single application on a remote system, a native shim to the Windows GUI would make remote administration a whee bit less clunky on slow/high latency links... compared to full RDP session, at least.

I also know that various remote application services can do similar things (e.g. Citrix), but since we're already talking about a potential B-movie teleporter accident...

Re:X11

[wjcofkc]

I like dinosaurs a whole lot.

Re:X11

[Strider-]

Uh, this is why you have Remote App stuff?

My experience has been that RDP is far more performant and reliable than X11 over the satellite links I have to deal with compared to X11 or VNC. Not as good as mosh, but we're talking GUI here.

Re:X11

[DamnOregonian]

In my experience, even a full-blown RDP session outperforms X forwarding in most cases.
When you think about it, it's not really surprising as to why.
Forwarding all interaction with the GUI, redraw events, inputs (a lot of events are generated as that mouse moves across that window), is a lot more data than a fixed-rate rasterized product sent with compression.

Re:X11

[DamnOregonian]

Dozens of events per frame, each multiple bytes long

Ya, no. Big no. You have to factor in the action caused by the event. And when you're throwing pixbufs over that pipe as fast as you can, 60 or 100 mouse moves per second build up a significant backlog of events. Mouse down? Send pixbuf for pressed button. Mouse up? Send pixbuf for unpressed button. Wait- you're already sending 30 other pixbufs because there's crap going on in your application? Well, shit.

Oh yes, another more contemporary problem is that X hasn't really been network-transparent for a long time, yet still assumes that it is.

No, it's fully network transparent. The problem is that there are extensions to the protocol in use that are relied upon to make the models performance not suck, liked mapped pixbufs instead of pixbufs thrown over the socket to the X server. You take away all the things that remove network transparency on a local machine, and you're left with what the network transparent model can actually do.
I have always loved the network transparency of X, at least in concept. In use, it's only viable on high bandwidth low latency networks.

Re:Added

[thegreatbob]

Sign me up, Botty! Finally, someone getting us back to the good ol' days of Kazaa and 'oops i accidentally indexed my whole hard drive!'

I'm so excited

[jimbobxxx]

OMG! Will I be able to use cut-and-paste! Its like a dream come true. Good things come to those that wait. 20 years or so.

Paths, Filesystems, and Shells

[sanosuke001]

Can we also get them to remove backslashes from paths, the /r from a newline, and add support for other filesystems and shells? That'd be swell.

Re:Paths, Filesystems, and Shells

[Quarters]

cmd.exe has accepted either \ or / for path separators for years. You can even mix/match them within a command.

C:\Users\jeff>cd ../..\windows
C:\Windows>

Re:Paths, Filesystems, and Shells

[molarmass192]

I'll take a UNIX kernel option too instead of Windows + Registry. In other words Windows Subsystem for UNIX. To me, Linux Subsystem for Windows is like glueing McLaren parts onto a Ford Fiesta and calling the result a sports car. I'd much rather bolt some Ford Fiesta parts onto a McLaren and take that to the races.

Re:Paths, Filesystems, and Shells

[nogginthenog]

Tab complete doesn't work with / in the path though.

Re:can I fireup putty and login to an windows serv

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been able to do it through SSH for a year or so. You've been able to do it with PowerShell for quite a while now (a decade?).

Again?

[drinkypoo]

Wasn't that supposed to be called Powershell? I guess I'm not the only one who didn't use it, huh?

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Powershell is a command line/scripting interpreter. That was quite capable at what it did, but one of its problem was that it ran in the same old horrible console window as cmd.exe.

This article is about a long-overdue update to the console window itself, as opposed to the command line interpreter running inside it.

Re:Again?

[Quarters]

No. Powershell is a shell. This is all about improving the console so the various shells (Powershell, cmd, etc...) can gain vastly improved output (amongst others) capabilities.

Re:can I fireup putty and login to an windows serv

[jdavidb]

Judging by the article summary, there's still no distinction made between "the console" and "the command-line," so I am betting no.

Emoji support? Yawn.

[martinX]

Emoji support? Call me when they include memoji support. That's where it's at!

So, you thought Windows was riddled with security

[mistr]

- We have such sights to show you!

Re: can I fireup putty and login to an windows ser

[mistr]

I guess the point here would be no, you would just go c:\Windows> ssh user@winhost

"DOS Box?"

[CohibaVancouver]

But will this finally, once-and-for-all, end those online instructions to "Open a DOS box?"

Powershell is not Bash

[aberglas]

What more needs to be said. It is ... different.

Unix shell works on strings. Powershell works on objects. That is an important difference. Especially if the strings have funny characters in them.

As to speed, it is .net, so I presume compiles down to machine code.

Re:Powershell is not Bash

[PmanAce]

PowerShell is not a compiled Language. It doesn't produce IL directly either.

So think of it like an interpreted language that just happens to live in a Dotnet Ecosystem which allows it to instantiate and interact with DOTNET objects thus making it seem like a "DOTNET language". PowerShell has its own Extended Type System (ETS) that makes it more dynamic.. You can create objects on the fly with whatever properties you want, or take an existing dotnet object, and add stuff to it. PowerShell is a dynamic language. With dynamic scoping. It is a pipeline centric language, which passes rich objects through the pipeline (in contrast to binary/text pipelines in unix) PowerShell is a command (verb and noun) centric language in philosophy and implementation, and though it is a RICH Object language, i wouldn't say its object ORIENTATED. you can interact with objects, and create them, but the goal is to produce task based COMMANDS PowerShell lives in different environments. It is a line by line REPL Command line interpreter, but it is also a full scripting engine that can be embedded in other applications.

https://stackoverflow.com/ques...

enough said

[NikeHerc]

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

Re:enough said

[thegarbz]

"Those who do not understand Henry Spencers quote are condemned to post it, irrelevantly." --thegarbz

Re:enough said

[NikeHerc]

"Those who do not understand Henry Spencers quote are condemned to post it, irrelevantly." --thegarbz

"Those who do not understand the original post are condemned to reply irrelevantly." --me

Won't happen

[duke_cheetah2003]

See, the UNIX paradigm has been something that Microsoft has never been able to swallow. Keep it simple. That's it. That's why all the UNIX commands we know and love have survived through the years, they are simple. They get the job done.

Stuff has been added, sure, but most of the original shell and common system commands have remained the same, decades on. Some 50 years of sameness and simplicity that Microsoft will never understand.

In all my dealings with Microsoft software, they seem to strive to make things as complicated and insane as possible. Even this new powershell, the commands are needlessly long, with long parameters names and very strict syntax. And not to be outdone, a whole new spam of technobabble error messages. Their APIs and programming languages are the same way, sure they are pretty powerful, but the complexity, nothing is simple. Simple isn't something Microsoft does. So they'll never be able to ever be 'unix' like.

Re:Won't happen

[strikethree]

See, the UNIX paradigm has been something that Microsoft has never been able to swallow. Keep it simple. That's it. That's why all the UNIX commands we know and love have survived through the years, they are simple. They get the job done.

Well, SystemD is trying to make a liar out of you. Pardon me while I roll my eyes in their general direction.

Microsoft...

[Excelcia]

Microsoft...

...hasn't made anything better since Windows 3.1.

The CLI maximizing properly is news? That's a /lot/ better? That's "Microsoft Better". Microsoft has embraced, extended, and now extinguished the word "better".

Clink for older Windows

[trawg]

If you're still on Windows 7 or 8.1 like I am on most of my PCs, check out Clink - an extension for the Windows command line that adds bash-style command line functionality to cmd.exe.

I was only just introduced to this by a colleague and can't believe I only just discovered it. Supports things like CTRL-V copy/paste which is pretty handy.

There's a command line in WIndows? Wow!

[AntisocialNetworker]

What's it for?

Re:can I fireup putty and login to an windows serv

[thegarbz]

You can fire up putty and login to any Windows machine providing it is in developer mode. Better* still you don't even need to fire up putty. Just use the built in ssh client in Windows. Get with the times.

*Actually not better. The built-in ssh client in Windows 10 is quite basic.

I'll finally be able to name folders with poop?

[sabbede]

The poop emoji that is. I've waited too long for that ability as-is.

Re: can I fireup putty and login to an windows ser

[reanjr]

I installed OpenSSH server on Windows over a decade ago. It was almost painless. Would it be nice to have it installed out of the box like OS X and most Linux distros? Sure. But that's hardly a significant difference between platforms.