5 ms·

I think they should've named it something else to avoid confusion, especially if it doesn't have the same behavior as unix sudo. If it has different arguments a

I think they should've named it something else to avoid confusion, especially if it doesn't have the same behavior as unix sudo. If it has different arguments and features, imagine the confusion of unsuspecting users searching how to use sudo in the future.

Springtime 3y ago
> especially if it doesn't have the same behavior as unix sudo... imagine the confusion of unsuspecting users searching how to use sudo in the future. It's hard to imagine a company that size would name it so deliberately without realizing it would cause confusion in search engine results and such. A good faith assumption would be they wanted to make Windows more familiar to users of both but it also means that Windows will get mentioned in more Linux results over time to disambiguate it.
- timnetworks 3y ago
  >It's hard to imagine a company that size would name it so deliberately without realizing it would cause confusion in search engine results and such. same microsoft as where I'm from?
- herbst 3y ago
  So it's just some black hat SEO to seem more relevant to Linux users?
blibble 3y ago
that's the standard microsoft way embrace (copy sudo), extend (add incompatible options), extinguish
- Anon1096 3y ago
  I can say with 100% certainty that Microsoft is not going to extinguish sudo
  - xattt 3y ago
    “Please watch this in-terminal ad while you enter your password”
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This really goes to show that no matter how legitimate a viewpoint (Microsoft is into EEE), there are always people looking to pretty unintelligently bandwagon. Yes, we know. Internet Explorer, yada yada. Beyond the ridiculousness of the notion of sudo specifically being a target for MS, the notion that MS, or any company of its size, is THAT single-minded, is absurd.
jraph 3y ago
They've done it with curl: they made an alias to their own program not supporting the same feature set and it inevitably backfired [1]. sudo is a complex program with a lot of different options [2] and as people from MS said here, it's never going to be compatible because of how Windows works differently. While I understand picking a familiar name, sudo is certainly not the only player, there's also doas. This shows people can adapt to another name and another name would have seemed more appropriate. edit: whoops, it was already mentioned in this thread [3] [1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/08/19/removing-the-powershell-curl-alias/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/08/19/removing-the-powershe... [2] https://linux.die.net/man/8/sudo https://linux.die.net/man/8/sudo [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305452#39309126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305452#39309126
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  > sudo is certainly not the only player, there's also doas. This shows people can adapt to another name The fact that doas has far fewer users, and examples everywhere show `sudo xyz` as the way to run xyz as root, shows that people do not adapt to a different name. Microsoft has been trying, for years, to get developers to use Windows systems. This is another good step towards doing so. The answer isn't to use a different name; the answer is to actually support most of the sudo interface. But that said, there's a subset of the sudo interface that would cover the majority of what most people need on a regular basis: -H (change home directory) -i (act like a login shell, which may not be meaningful on Windows but could at least be ignored for compatibility) -E (preserve the environment) -u (set the user to something other than root) -g (set the group) -s (just run a shell)
  - snvzz 3y ago
    >The answer isn't to use a different name; the answer is to actually support most of the sudo interface. The answer is to do either. i.e. the complaint about using the name while offering a different, incompatible interface is valid.
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
wvenable 3y ago
Windows and Linux already share dozens of commandline commands with the same name and have different behaviors.
- jraph 3y ago
  This doesn't mean this isn't an issue, and that the issue should be worsened. Of course, it being an issue is an opinion (of mine), see my daniel.haxx.se link from my other comment next to yours for a motivation of this opinion.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    The situation with curl is different because these are unix utilities you can run on Windows (hence the issue). Now "sudo" is not a very Windows-y name for this utility but it has the advantage of being self-descriptive by those most likely to use it. It's sudo... for Windows. You don't have to explain it further. The command line namespace is flat and there are only so many letter combinations, the idea that an OS shouldn't reuse a command name from a different OS is pretty limiting.
    - jraph 3y ago
      > The situation with curl is different because these are unix utilities you can run on Windows (hence the issue). Good point, the unlikeliness to ever run the real sudo on Windows makes it less an issue. Though doesn't remove it completely. You could for instance imagine a bash script (which you can run on Windows, since you can install Bash there) trying to use sudo if present, or something else, and fail because sudo is present but doesn't have the expected features. In shell land, the name of a command is almost an implicit contract. > The command line namespace is flat and there are only so many letter combinations, the idea that an OS shouldn't reuse a command name from a different OS is pretty limiting. In practice: - Programs are mostly cross platform so many "commands" can work on different OS. Which makes the command line namespace quite shared between OSes - I've not seen many clashes. I can certainly remember of one: the Chromium browser and the Chromium B.S.U game. It was unintentional. The "sudo" one is. You can certainly avoid it.
t0ps0il 3y ago
> imagine the confusion of unsuspecting users searching how to use sudo in the future. Linux users can experience this now by using sed on macOS
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  People can experience confusion on any operating system by using sed :)
- bluish29 3y ago
  To be fair, you will probably be confused by using sed in general
- rjmunro 3y ago
  Or by using a bash builtin that duplicates a normal command.
CrendKing 3y ago
I disagree. Although this "Sudo for Windows" is not a one-to-one port from Linux, it does the same function which is to elevate a unprivileged command. Imagine if they announce "Introducing Dosu for Windows", you won't know what the hell that is without reading at least the first paragraph.
- soraminazuki 3y ago
  In addition to not being a one-to-one port, Sudo for Windows is a completely unrelated command. > it does the same function which is to elevate a unprivileged command That's only one of the use cases of Sudo. Here's a description of Sudo from the official manual [1]: > sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user Sudo for Windows can't do that. It's mentioned in its FAQ: > the sudo command on Windows does not support running programs as other users Sudo for Windows is like a cat command that can't concatenate files or a touch command that doesn't update timestamps. [1]: https://www.sudo.ws/docs/man/1.8.18/sudo.man/ https://www.sudo.ws/docs/man/1.8.18/sudo.man/ [2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    > like a cat command that can't concatenate files Oh, that's a good counter-example to your own point: 99% of people who use cat don't care about this functionality.
    - soraminazuki 3y ago
      That's an astonishing claim to make without evidence. cat *.txt is a pattern I see being used everywhere. Same goes for sudo. If you're going to claim that a whopping 99% of users don't use the CLI options or /etc/sudoers, you'd need solid proof. Because a simple search shows otherwise: https://grep.app/search?q=sudo%20-&regexp=true https://grep.app/search?q=sudo%20-&regexp=true This Sudo for Windows behaves nothing like the actual sudo. It doesn't even achieve the original's stated purpose. Also considering that search results for anything involving Windows tends to be riddled with spams and outright scams, this will negatively affect non-Windows users searching for sudo as well. So again, this naming conflict is unfortunate.
ninjin 3y ago
You are not the only one thinking so. There is already a thread on OpenBSD's tech@ taking swipes at the obvious naming collision: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=170742832804260&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=170742832804260&w=2
ape4 3y ago
perhaps `admininator`
michaelcampbell 3y ago
I just hope it's not in the PowerShell zeitgeist of `--Super_Long_Option_Names_that_Use_a_Mix_Of_Caps_And_things`
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  PowerShell options are all single dash, tab completable, case insensitive, will match on the shortest unique prefix, and can be aliased with shorter ones like `-EA` is `-ErrorAction, and are consistent because the shell parses them not the cmdlet.
  - cchance 3y ago
    I always laugh when people from the unix side try to shit on powershell when powershells pretty fucking amazing and has a solid UX for just how many things ... work
    - michaelcampbell 3y ago
      Given what it replaces, sure.

Springtime 3y ago

> especially if it doesn't have the same behavior as unix sudo... imagine the confusion of unsuspecting users searching how to use sudo in the future. It's hard to imagine a company that size would name it so deliberately without realizing it would cause confusion in search engine results and such. A good faith assumption would be they wanted to make Windows more familiar to users of both but it also means that Windows will get mentioned in more Linux results over time to disambiguate it.

timnetworks 3y ago
>It's hard to imagine a company that size would name it so deliberately without realizing it would cause confusion in search engine results and such. same microsoft as where I'm from?
herbst 3y ago
So it's just some black hat SEO to seem more relevant to Linux users?

blibble 3y ago

that's the standard microsoft way embrace (copy sudo), extend (add incompatible options), extinguish

Anon1096 3y ago
I can say with 100% certainty that Microsoft is not going to extinguish sudo
- xattt 3y ago
  “Please watch this in-terminal ad while you enter your password”
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
This really goes to show that no matter how legitimate a viewpoint (Microsoft is into EEE), there are always people looking to pretty unintelligently bandwagon. Yes, we know. Internet Explorer, yada yada. Beyond the ridiculousness of the notion of sudo specifically being a target for MS, the notion that MS, or any company of its size, is THAT single-minded, is absurd.

jraph 3y ago

They've done it with curl: they made an alias to their own program not supporting the same feature set and it inevitably backfired [1]. sudo is a complex program with a lot of different options [2] and as people from MS said here, it's never going to be compatible because of how Windows works differently. While I understand picking a familiar name, sudo is certainly not the only player, there's also doas. This shows people can adapt to another name and another name would have seemed more appropriate. edit: whoops, it was already mentioned in this thread [3] [1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/08/19/removing-the-powershell-curl-alias/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/08/19/removing-the-powershe... [2] https://linux.die.net/man/8/sudo https://linux.die.net/man/8/sudo [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305452#39309126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305452#39309126

JoshTriplett 3y ago
> sudo is certainly not the only player, there's also doas. This shows people can adapt to another name The fact that doas has far fewer users, and examples everywhere show `sudo xyz` as the way to run xyz as root, shows that people do not adapt to a different name. Microsoft has been trying, for years, to get developers to use Windows systems. This is another good step towards doing so. The answer isn't to use a different name; the answer is to actually support most of the sudo interface. But that said, there's a subset of the sudo interface that would cover the majority of what most people need on a regular basis: -H (change home directory) -i (act like a login shell, which may not be meaningful on Windows but could at least be ignored for compatibility) -E (preserve the environment) -u (set the user to something other than root) -g (set the group) -s (just run a shell)
- snvzz 3y ago
  >The answer isn't to use a different name; the answer is to actually support most of the sudo interface. The answer is to do either. i.e. the complaint about using the name while offering a different, incompatible interface is valid.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago

wvenable 3y ago

Windows and Linux already share dozens of commandline commands with the same name and have different behaviors.

jraph 3y ago
This doesn't mean this isn't an issue, and that the issue should be worsened. Of course, it being an issue is an opinion (of mine), see my daniel.haxx.se link from my other comment next to yours for a motivation of this opinion.
- wvenable 3y ago
  The situation with curl is different because these are unix utilities you can run on Windows (hence the issue). Now "sudo" is not a very Windows-y name for this utility but it has the advantage of being self-descriptive by those most likely to use it. It's sudo... for Windows. You don't have to explain it further. The command line namespace is flat and there are only so many letter combinations, the idea that an OS shouldn't reuse a command name from a different OS is pretty limiting.
  - jraph 3y ago
    > The situation with curl is different because these are unix utilities you can run on Windows (hence the issue). Good point, the unlikeliness to ever run the real sudo on Windows makes it less an issue. Though doesn't remove it completely. You could for instance imagine a bash script (which you can run on Windows, since you can install Bash there) trying to use sudo if present, or something else, and fail because sudo is present but doesn't have the expected features. In shell land, the name of a command is almost an implicit contract. > The command line namespace is flat and there are only so many letter combinations, the idea that an OS shouldn't reuse a command name from a different OS is pretty limiting. In practice: - Programs are mostly cross platform so many "commands" can work on different OS. Which makes the command line namespace quite shared between OSes - I've not seen many clashes. I can certainly remember of one: the Chromium browser and the Chromium B.S.U game. It was unintentional. The "sudo" one is. You can certainly avoid it.

t0ps0il 3y ago

> imagine the confusion of unsuspecting users searching how to use sudo in the future. Linux users can experience this now by using sed on macOS

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
People can experience confusion on any operating system by using sed :)
bluish29 3y ago
To be fair, you will probably be confused by using sed in general
rjmunro 3y ago
Or by using a bash builtin that duplicates a normal command.

CrendKing 3y ago

I disagree. Although this "Sudo for Windows" is not a one-to-one port from Linux, it does the same function which is to elevate a unprivileged command. Imagine if they announce "Introducing Dosu for Windows", you won't know what the hell that is without reading at least the first paragraph.

soraminazuki 3y ago
In addition to not being a one-to-one port, Sudo for Windows is a completely unrelated command. > it does the same function which is to elevate a unprivileged command That's only one of the use cases of Sudo. Here's a description of Sudo from the official manual [1]: > sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user Sudo for Windows can't do that. It's mentioned in its FAQ: > the sudo command on Windows does not support running programs as other users Sudo for Windows is like a cat command that can't concatenate files or a touch command that doesn't update timestamps. [1]: https://www.sudo.ws/docs/man/1.8.18/sudo.man/ https://www.sudo.ws/docs/man/1.8.18/sudo.man/ [2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sudo/
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  > like a cat command that can't concatenate files Oh, that's a good counter-example to your own point: 99% of people who use cat don't care about this functionality.
  - soraminazuki 3y ago
    That's an astonishing claim to make without evidence. cat *.txt is a pattern I see being used everywhere. Same goes for sudo. If you're going to claim that a whopping 99% of users don't use the CLI options or /etc/sudoers, you'd need solid proof. Because a simple search shows otherwise: https://grep.app/search?q=sudo%20-&regexp=true https://grep.app/search?q=sudo%20-&regexp=true This Sudo for Windows behaves nothing like the actual sudo. It doesn't even achieve the original's stated purpose. Also considering that search results for anything involving Windows tends to be riddled with spams and outright scams, this will negatively affect non-Windows users searching for sudo as well. So again, this naming conflict is unfortunate.

ninjin 3y ago

You are not the only one thinking so. There is already a thread on OpenBSD's tech@ taking swipes at the obvious naming collision: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=170742832804260&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=170742832804260&w=2

ape4 3y ago

perhaps `admininator`

michaelcampbell 3y ago

I just hope it's not in the PowerShell zeitgeist of `--Super_Long_Option_Names_that_Use_a_Mix_Of_Caps_And_things`

jodrellblank 3y ago
PowerShell options are all single dash, tab completable, case insensitive, will match on the shortest unique prefix, and can be aliased with shorter ones like `-EA` is `-ErrorAction, and are consistent because the shell parses them not the cmdlet.
- cchance 3y ago
  I always laugh when people from the unix side try to shit on powershell when powershells pretty fucking amazing and has a solid UX for just how many things ... work
  - michaelcampbell 3y ago
    Given what it replaces, sure.