6 ms·

Bash for Windows... Bash is a Unix shell. Linux is an operating system. Completely different concepts. Bash on Windows has existed for decades now, through Cyg

Bash for Windows... Bash is a Unix shell. Linux is an operating system. Completely different concepts. Bash on Windows has existed for decades now, through Cygwin. https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-cat.cgi?file=x86_64%2Fbash%2Fbash-4.4.11-2 https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-cat.cgi?file=x86_64%2Fba... Trying to reduce the entire GNU/Linux ecosystem to "Bash" is insulting to the community you are trying to appeal to: Linux is an immensely large and complex project, which has millions of lines of code. The GNU part of GNU/Linux has a couple of more millions of lines of code as well. Bash is small in comparison.

aerovistae 10y ago
Microsoft adds this amazing set of features and the only response you have is "your name is insulting the people you're trying to appeal to"? "Trying"? As if they're failing? Do you know how much people love this project?
- partycoder 10y ago
  Your opinion is clearly not biased at all Mr. "aerovistae". Your handle sounds like a mixture of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista. A true, unbiased non-MS fan. Are you on Microsoft's payroll? Do you have like a Slac-- Skype Teams room where you coordinate the downvotes?
  - pavlov 10y ago
    The downvote you got from me didn't need to be coordinated. You're trolling.
  - sctb 10y ago
    Please stop violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- laumars 10y ago
  A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. Microsoft have done a lot over the years to troll the Linux community. While many of the younger HN members will be familiar with the "new open source Microsoft" some of us oldies have had to endure IE breaking the web plus ActiveX / Silverlight and other MS web lockins. Comments like "open source is communism" from top MS execs. Fragmentation of Java (which eventually spawned into .NET but there were years of pain before .NET became a thing of beauty). To be honest more sins than i have time to list. So many of us are now cynical by default with regards to MS. Take WSL for example, I'm sure their motives are just to encourage people away from Linux and OSX for sysadmin and dev workstations. I can see that strategy working for many people too. But at least with WSL, if they do decide to cripple it once they have the customer base then it's pretty trivial for users to switch away again (which was less doable with many of the other tech they've dominated the market place with). So while the trolling remarks of the OP are clearly unconstructive, i can at least emphasise with why he feels the need to speak out against MS. He just did so in a pretty lousy way.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. I'm also not convinced they've changed at all when I see what they've done to things like skype, where they have somewhat of a monopoly (thanks to office).
    - fragmede 10y ago
      Or more recently, Microsoft's refusal to remove "curl" from Powershell, where "curl" was an alias to a totally different Windows function that barely resembled curl. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319670
  - lloeki 10y ago
    > at least with WSL, if they do decide to cripple it once they have the customer base then it's pretty trivial for users to switch away again Now that they're embracing the typical Linux userland, I can't help but ponder if they'll try shifting to the extend+extinguish part later on. I guess old habits die hard, especially when you got burnt multiple times already, although I'm not cynical enough to think this would be all planned beforehand but more like at some point some exec would notice this as a strategic opportunity to seize. That said they're certainly winning some Linux users back, and if anything, this may even help in getting some Windows people used to Unix and Bash, reducing the gap for them to try their hand at some Linux distro. All in all, cross-pollination is good both ways.
laumars 10y ago
Your entry point to WSL is bash and while you may be able to compile and install other shells, calling it "bash" isn't too far from the truth. Really the awkwardness of the naming is more of a testament to the power of scripting on Unix-like OSs (eg how scripting is a first class citizen and how most of the ecosystem is modelled around CLI, and thus scripting, support) more than it is an insult. As for cygwin, that was simply terrible. MinGW was better but WSL is already better than both and it's still a long way from feature parity. Of course some MS haters will always find a way to fault this, and i can sympathise with that point too because I've been burnt my MS too and thus, as much as i found WSL to be a much needed addition to Windows, I'm still going to stick with Linux as my primary OS. However personal biases of Windows aside, even i have to admit that WSL is a pretty good feature.
- partycoder 10y ago
  EDIT: Your choice of shell can be something different than bash... you opt to use zsh or fish or another shell. Therefore saying "Bash for Windows" can be objectively said to be unnecessarily confusing/inaccurate. I think Cygwin was less convenient than an ABI such as WSL, but by no means "terrible". Cygwin was initially released around 1995, it served a valuable purpose before the first VM products came along.
  - mankash666 10y ago
    I am amazed that you started at all. Given your fascination with personal attacks
  - laumars 10y ago
    Typing on a phone. autopredict errors happen and I usually miss at least one of them since my proof reading skills suck. Apologies for that
  - ohyeshedid 10y ago
    >EDIT: Your choice of shell can be something different than >bash... Bash is the default shell. It's also the generic command you run to launch the WSL environment. While the multiple names for the same subsystem are a little nebulous, Bash is far from being as confusing or misleading as you're attempting to portray. Also, editing your original snide grammar dismissal due to the downvotes it received isn't appreciated. That's deceptive at best. Either own your bad behavior or apologize for it, but don't edit it and pretend like you were being rational.
vesinisa 10y ago
^ Don't feed the troll.
ghshephard 10y ago
For anybody comes to this thread late - partycoder is 100% correct. The Bash.exe component of Bash/WSL is entirely unrelated to the bash shell (that gets executed inside the WSL subsystem) - should have been named wsl.exe. Microsoft is just trying to ride (mostly successfully) for free on all of Bash's goodwill. I will note, that Microsoft, when referring to their WSL component, never refers to it as Bash - and always "Bash/WSL" - though it's dubious as to whether that's even meaningful (unless they are trying to say once you start WSL you can run bash. But you can also run fish. Or any other shell.

aerovistae 10y ago

Microsoft adds this amazing set of features and the only response you have is "your name is insulting the people you're trying to appeal to"? "Trying"? As if they're failing? Do you know how much people love this project?

partycoder 10y ago
Your opinion is clearly not biased at all Mr. "aerovistae". Your handle sounds like a mixture of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista. A true, unbiased non-MS fan. Are you on Microsoft's payroll? Do you have like a Slac-- Skype Teams room where you coordinate the downvotes?
- pavlov 10y ago
  The downvote you got from me didn't need to be coordinated. You're trolling.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please stop violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
laumars 10y ago
A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. Microsoft have done a lot over the years to troll the Linux community. While many of the younger HN members will be familiar with the "new open source Microsoft" some of us oldies have had to endure IE breaking the web plus ActiveX / Silverlight and other MS web lockins. Comments like "open source is communism" from top MS execs. Fragmentation of Java (which eventually spawned into .NET but there were years of pain before .NET became a thing of beauty). To be honest more sins than i have time to list. So many of us are now cynical by default with regards to MS. Take WSL for example, I'm sure their motives are just to encourage people away from Linux and OSX for sysadmin and dev workstations. I can see that strategy working for many people too. But at least with WSL, if they do decide to cripple it once they have the customer base then it's pretty trivial for users to switch away again (which was less doable with many of the other tech they've dominated the market place with). So while the trolling remarks of the OP are clearly unconstructive, i can at least emphasise with why he feels the need to speak out against MS. He just did so in a pretty lousy way.
- flukus 10y ago
  > A lot of resistance some will have to WSL will be old battle scars from Microsofts past behaviour. I'm also not convinced they've changed at all when I see what they've done to things like skype, where they have somewhat of a monopoly (thanks to office).
  - fragmede 10y ago
    Or more recently, Microsoft's refusal to remove "curl" from Powershell, where "curl" was an alias to a totally different Windows function that barely resembled curl. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319670
- lloeki 10y ago
  > at least with WSL, if they do decide to cripple it once they have the customer base then it's pretty trivial for users to switch away again Now that they're embracing the typical Linux userland, I can't help but ponder if they'll try shifting to the extend+extinguish part later on. I guess old habits die hard, especially when you got burnt multiple times already, although I'm not cynical enough to think this would be all planned beforehand but more like at some point some exec would notice this as a strategic opportunity to seize. That said they're certainly winning some Linux users back, and if anything, this may even help in getting some Windows people used to Unix and Bash, reducing the gap for them to try their hand at some Linux distro. All in all, cross-pollination is good both ways.

laumars 10y ago

Your entry point to WSL is bash and while you may be able to compile and install other shells, calling it "bash" isn't too far from the truth. Really the awkwardness of the naming is more of a testament to the power of scripting on Unix-like OSs (eg how scripting is a first class citizen and how most of the ecosystem is modelled around CLI, and thus scripting, support) more than it is an insult. As for cygwin, that was simply terrible. MinGW was better but WSL is already better than both and it's still a long way from feature parity. Of course some MS haters will always find a way to fault this, and i can sympathise with that point too because I've been burnt my MS too and thus, as much as i found WSL to be a much needed addition to Windows, I'm still going to stick with Linux as my primary OS. However personal biases of Windows aside, even i have to admit that WSL is a pretty good feature.

partycoder 10y ago
EDIT: Your choice of shell can be something different than bash... you opt to use zsh or fish or another shell. Therefore saying "Bash for Windows" can be objectively said to be unnecessarily confusing/inaccurate. I think Cygwin was less convenient than an ABI such as WSL, but by no means "terrible". Cygwin was initially released around 1995, it served a valuable purpose before the first VM products came along.
- mankash666 10y ago
  I am amazed that you started at all. Given your fascination with personal attacks
- laumars 10y ago
  Typing on a phone. autopredict errors happen and I usually miss at least one of them since my proof reading skills suck. Apologies for that
- ohyeshedid 10y ago
  >EDIT: Your choice of shell can be something different than >bash... Bash is the default shell. It's also the generic command you run to launch the WSL environment. While the multiple names for the same subsystem are a little nebulous, Bash is far from being as confusing or misleading as you're attempting to portray. Also, editing your original snide grammar dismissal due to the downvotes it received isn't appreciated. That's deceptive at best. Either own your bad behavior or apologize for it, but don't edit it and pretend like you were being rational.

vesinisa 10y ago

^ Don't feed the troll.

ghshephard 10y ago

For anybody comes to this thread late - partycoder is 100% correct. The Bash.exe component of Bash/WSL is entirely unrelated to the bash shell (that gets executed inside the WSL subsystem) - should have been named wsl.exe. Microsoft is just trying to ride (mostly successfully) for free on all of Bash's goodwill. I will note, that Microsoft, when referring to their WSL component, never refers to it as Bash - and always "Bash/WSL" - though it's dubious as to whether that's even meaningful (unless they are trying to say once you start WSL you can run bash. But you can also run fish. Or any other shell.