4 ms·

I think this has less to do with lack of POSIX compliance and more to do with how unfriendly windows is to hacking in general. The command line is completely cr

I think this has less to do with lack of POSIX compliance and more to do with how unfriendly windows is to hacking in general. The command line is completely crippled. If the command line had a similar feature set to Linux I don't think POSIX complaince would matter much. So between a crappy command line and the registry, hacking windows never seems worth the trouble.

nradov 18y ago
Can you clarify what features Windows PowerShell http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/mana... is missing compared to the shells typically used with Linux?
- kleevr 18y ago
  I'm not a shell expert, but I wanted something unix like when work dictated that I would be on XP, so I downloaded Windows PS. Maybe I have an old machine, but it was sluggish, it didn't seem to share the same system environment variables to the point of annoyance.
  - kleevr 18y ago
    ...speaking of slow... I just found out why my shell was so slow: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/08/update-gac-ps1.aspx# http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/08/update-g...
- arockwell 18y ago
  Sorry I honestly can't, I've never heard of PowerShell, nor have I ever used win 2003 server. However, the most obvious feature its missing is I can't run it on xp or vista. Why do I need to run a server to have a decent shell? I find having a nice shell handy for various day to day development tasks. edit: whoops, turns out I'm totally wrong, thanks nfg.
  - nfg 18y ago
    Yes you can, powershell is available for both XP and Vista. Google it.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  posix, it still doesn't support enough posix to make all the tools I use in linux natively available. so long as I need cygwin or msys for git, it won't be good enough.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  To say that it's missing features is to imply that they could add features and then it would be as good. That's not the case I see, as a shell is little without the surrounding ecosystem, and Windows doesn't have it. PowerShell is missing QWAN; The linux CLI is the same if you boot to it or boot to a GUI and open a terminal, or SSH in. It has a wide ecosystem of meta-apps which aid using the CLI such as screen and less, and it's been built up over the years with bash/readline keyboard shortcuts. Not to mention that lots of nix programs are CLI programs with GUI wrappers, or configured with text files you can edit in emacs/vim. The Windows command line window is all there is (you can't boot to 'DOS' anymore, or SSH in without third party software - and if you do it's a different kind of experience). There's nothing much to do as most programs aren't CLI programs and aren't configured with text files and aren't scriptable and you don't really want to poke around in the registry if you have to be typing "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\..." or whatever. There are no emacs keyboard shortcuts and everything is shoved in folders with long names and capital letters and spaces and it's just not as good*. On top of that, PowerShell is a misleading name - since it's not really a shell, it's more like irb or the Python interactive interpreter. Sure you can "change directories" and such, but it's not really a bash competitor, not a shell in that sense. But on paper, feature for feature? Who knows, they're probably quite close...
rcoder 18y ago
When the Monad shell was announced (back in the days when Longhorn was going to have a database filesystem, uber-cool widgets, and unicorns that puked rainbows), I actually found myself seriously considering installing Windows on a machine again just to play with it. The idea of a command shell that could be extended in any CLR-hosted language, with pipes that supported structured objects, not just text streams, was pretty damn exciting. Then MS delayed it, split Monad (renamed PowerShell) from the OS-that-is-now-Vista, and sat on the technology for a few more years before quietly launching it as an Exchange Server admin tool. Meanwhile, I found myself using IRb and IPython more and more, and never really got around to setting up that Windows box.
- arockwell 18y ago
  I completely agree. I thought that MS stripped every cool feature from Longhorn except for Aero.
- ivank 18y ago
  The CLI is more than just the shell's capabilities. Microsoft expected people to use PowerShell with the same horrible cmd.exe, and ignore the multi-second startup times.
- iigs 18y ago
  It's just as well. Monad appears to suffer from severe second system effect ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect ). The early demos I saw had hopelessly long names, verbose syntax, and attempted to coalesce data into xml. While xml seems like a more flexible target than plain text, the net result was that it took a foreign set of tools to manipulate xml from one command's output to what the next command wanted. In the spirit of "Get off of my lawn!": I wish that .vbs had been cultivated into a usable environment for interacting with the computer instead of left to be identified with malware. The language is/was certainly more appropriately sized for typical system automation tasks.

nradov 18y ago

Can you clarify what features Windows PowerShell http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/mana... is missing compared to the shells typically used with Linux?

kleevr 18y ago
I'm not a shell expert, but I wanted something unix like when work dictated that I would be on XP, so I downloaded Windows PS. Maybe I have an old machine, but it was sluggish, it didn't seem to share the same system environment variables to the point of annoyance.
- kleevr 18y ago
  ...speaking of slow... I just found out why my shell was so slow: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/08/update-gac-ps1.aspx# http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/08/update-g...
arockwell 18y ago
Sorry I honestly can't, I've never heard of PowerShell, nor have I ever used win 2003 server. However, the most obvious feature its missing is I can't run it on xp or vista. Why do I need to run a server to have a decent shell? I find having a nice shell handy for various day to day development tasks. edit: whoops, turns out I'm totally wrong, thanks nfg.
- nfg 18y ago
  Yes you can, powershell is available for both XP and Vista. Google it.
xenoterracide 18y ago
posix, it still doesn't support enough posix to make all the tools I use in linux natively available. so long as I need cygwin or msys for git, it won't be good enough.
jodrellblank 18y ago
To say that it's missing features is to imply that they could add features and then it would be as good. That's not the case I see, as a shell is little without the surrounding ecosystem, and Windows doesn't have it. PowerShell is missing QWAN; The linux CLI is the same if you boot to it or boot to a GUI and open a terminal, or SSH in. It has a wide ecosystem of meta-apps which aid using the CLI such as screen and less, and it's been built up over the years with bash/readline keyboard shortcuts. Not to mention that lots of nix programs are CLI programs with GUI wrappers, or configured with text files you can edit in emacs/vim. The Windows command line window is all there is (you can't boot to 'DOS' anymore, or SSH in without third party software - and if you do it's a different kind of experience). There's nothing much to do as most programs aren't CLI programs and aren't configured with text files and aren't scriptable and you don't really want to poke around in the registry if you have to be typing "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\..." or whatever. There are no emacs keyboard shortcuts and everything is shoved in folders with long names and capital letters and spaces and it's just not as good*. On top of that, PowerShell is a misleading name - since it's not really a shell, it's more like irb or the Python interactive interpreter. Sure you can "change directories" and such, but it's not really a bash competitor, not a shell in that sense. But on paper, feature for feature? Who knows, they're probably quite close...

rcoder 18y ago

When the Monad shell was announced (back in the days when Longhorn was going to have a database filesystem, uber-cool widgets, and unicorns that puked rainbows), I actually found myself seriously considering installing Windows on a machine again just to play with it. The idea of a command shell that could be extended in any CLR-hosted language, with pipes that supported structured objects, not just text streams, was pretty damn exciting. Then MS delayed it, split Monad (renamed PowerShell) from the OS-that-is-now-Vista, and sat on the technology for a few more years before quietly launching it as an Exchange Server admin tool. Meanwhile, I found myself using IRb and IPython more and more, and never really got around to setting up that Windows box.

arockwell 18y ago
I completely agree. I thought that MS stripped every cool feature from Longhorn except for Aero.
ivank 18y ago
The CLI is more than just the shell's capabilities. Microsoft expected people to use PowerShell with the same horrible cmd.exe, and ignore the multi-second startup times.
iigs 18y ago
It's just as well. Monad appears to suffer from severe second system effect ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect ). The early demos I saw had hopelessly long names, verbose syntax, and attempted to coalesce data into xml. While xml seems like a more flexible target than plain text, the net result was that it took a foreign set of tools to manipulate xml from one command's output to what the next command wanted. In the spirit of "Get off of my lawn!": I wish that .vbs had been cultivated into a usable environment for interacting with the computer instead of left to be identified with malware. The language is/was certainly more appropriately sized for typical system automation tasks.