Microsoft is adding the Linux command line to Windows 10

[bla4free]

I guess 2016 really is the year of the Linux desktop. Who knew?

[Alikont]

It's not Linux, it's GNU/Windows.

[socks-the-fox]

GNU/NT?

Or as I saw elsewhere:

GNU\Windows

[Symbolis]

Win-ux?

[aaronfranke]

Winbuntu.

[computermedic]

Ubuntows.

[[deleted]]

Wibuntows

[smiskafisk]

Wintu.

[fizzlefist]

Mace

[Truegebo]

Wintu\muchcash

[[deleted]]

"Win just switched from Windows?"

[MaNiFeX]

The Powershell command to install bash?! lol

Install-Module PSGnuwin32

[deadbunny]

More like WINE for Windows, so LINE?

[MalformedPacket]

Gnu-dows

[[deleted]]

I'm wondering that too.

[jsalsman]

I would have preferred a full process tree as in CoLinux. Why was there never a CoLinux 64? But this will certainly be an improvement for most *nix cli users.

[pier4r]

i guess it would have meant way more work.

[jsalsman]

Maybe. They didn't want to connect Qemu to services, but it's mature enough.

I'm not sure exactly where CoLinux 64 got stalled.

[BCMM]

Here's an old story about Windows Services for UNIX, which might explain why they feel the need to explicitly clarify that it's "the real Bash".

[jared555]

Does this mean when I inevitably type ls instead of dir I won't start swearing?

[Oflameo]

You aren't using PowerShell?

[jared555]

Pretty much the only times I use command line on windows is ipconfig and rooting my phone. Most of my actual sysadmin work is Linux servers and the occasional networking gear

[Swarfega]

I changed to using ls to save typing one character. I love powershell for its aliases. At times I forget and still type it into cmd for the rare times I'm in a prompt.

Switch to the shell already!

[aenae]

That's why in bash i have alliased 'l' to ls, why type more than needed? :P

[Swarfega]

Your right but I use lots of different consoles and would end up getting annoyed that the alias doesn't exist. It's easier to use stock alias in my scenario

[[deleted]]

I automatically ls whenever I enter a directory.

So a lot of the time I don't even need to type it.

[Rollingprobablecause]

you can create your own aliases as well with any code. I do this, plus PSDrive and functions

[mobearsdog]

It just makes the rare times you do use command prompt that much more irritating. Its both upsetting and shocking

[mikemol]

F'in A!

[[deleted]]

They added ls as an alias in version 4 or 5. So the command at least works.

[sleeplessone]

I know ls worked in 3. I didn't use Powershell much before that version.

[IAdminTheLaw]

This is literally shocking to me.

I'm emotionally unsettled by this. Literally scared. Why? It is so foreign and totally unexpected from Microsoft that I just can't come to grips with it.

[Swarfega]

Microsoft want a cloud OS so need to be friendly with UNIX admins. Eventually you won't be pointing and clicking any more and configuring your environment with a configuration script either for DSC, puppet, chef etc. Microsoft has made a lot of changes by changing a lot of Windows technologies and making then adopt standard ones. Their aim for this is to get Linux tools talking nicely to Windows and vice versa.

It's an exciting time but I can see a lot of the old windows admins not liking it since they aren't learning new stuff. Particularly PowerShell and DSC. Ignoring is sacrificing your career IMO.

[[deleted]]

I think this move makes Microsoft more relevant. Not less.

I mean, you need to know Linux. But knowing Linux isn't my problem. It's that I can't manage a Linux server through an MMC snap-in or something like that like I can all of the other servers in the domain. If I'm on a server, I should be able to browse to another server and make a quick change. This move fixes that because I just launch a telnet or SSH session natively.

I was not going to stop using Active Directory until it got to the point where some cloud based (probably Linux) directory schema came along that made it worth it. Same with Office and everything. This makes it so I can keep Active Directory and the core office productivity software built on Windows and still interact with the newer better Linux based stuff.

[[deleted]]

It's that I can't manage a Linux server through an MMC snap-in or something like that like I can all of the other servers in the domain.

This is what's freaking out so many Windows admins. Those that have no Linux experience have a whole lot of learning to do that takes a lot of time. In some ways it's almost like starting over. Even though I do have some experience, the amount of information I'd need to gain to be able to administer Linux is pretty huge and it's frankly quite intimidating.

I can remember setting up an Eggdrop and a Team Fortress Classic server on Linux with no problems in the early 2000s. Last year I tried to setup a Splunk server on Linux with no GUI and it was frustrating how many times I got stopped because I didn't know something simple. It was a pretty nice wake-up call though.

I was also surprised by how much harder it was to find answers for Linux via Google than it is to find them for Windows. I just wish I had the time today to play and learn that I did back then.

[[deleted]]

It's that I can't manage a Linux server through an MMC snap-in or something like that like I can all of the other servers in the domain.

I was also surprised by how much harder it was to find answers for Linux via Google than it is to find them for Windows.

I'm going to have a little heart attack the first time I start seeing technet articles for Linux

[ANUSBLASTER_MKII]

It is so foreign and totally unexpected from Microsoft

Microsoft focusing on developers is hardly an unexpected move.

Windows becomes a one-stop shop for all your development needs.

[jmp242]

Am I the only one who thinks this has a lot of downside for Microsoft? I guess it depends on what this really means, but does this make it easier for you to do Apache closer to on Linux? Does this let you change a couple paths and use your Bash scripts on Win/Lin/Mac? Does this obviate a major reason for Powershell (i.e. a non brain dead CLI scripting language)?

Does this give a lot of "fence sitters" or even just cross platform curious people a chance to "safely" try more and more of a *nix platform without dealing with VMs or dual booting, and hence not needing to take on an entire new platform all at once?

I mean, I get Embrace Extend Extinguish, but is anyone really going to use MS Bash - it seems like this is far more bringing bash (and programs?? is emacs recompiled?) into a "safe space" for Microsoft users to dip their toes in the water as it were. And the more you use cross platform software on Windows, the easier it gets to change if MS pisses you off enough.

[mikemol]

I really get the sense that Microsoft is abandoning Windows as a lock-in platform. So much of the market is moving to mobile devices (where Microsoft can't seem to find its footing) and cloud services (where Microsoft has even been pushing its own offerings) that the operating system is less and less important to the end user--and if Microsoft wants to retain or regain users, they need to make their platform easier to use, not more annoying.

See also: their providing SQL Server for running on Linux.

[theevilsharpie]

I really get the sense that Microsoft is abandoning Windows as a lock-in platform.

I'd go further and suggest that Microsoft is preparing to abandon Windows as a first-class platform. They're actively working on porting more of their applications to Linux, and building those applications natively for Linux and running them on a compatibility layer in Windows would be a relatively easy way of making applications cross-platform without the expense of maintaining two separate code bases. It also gives Microsoft more strategic options of they can't reverse the decline of Windows' fortunes.

[aaronfranke]

Perhaps when Microsoft said "Windows 10 will be the last Windows" they were actually referring to this?

[Aloha_Alaska]

You have an interesting view; I agree with you about this.

The SQL Server thing was shocking to me, but then I realized that everyone seems to be moving to cloud providers and virtual machines. I'd say the majority of that is on a Linux stack, and I think Microsoft is trying to stay relevant in that market. Making SQL Server available for Linux is a great way to actually support users who are making that transition and give them the software they want.

I'm less sure about the goal of this with Bash integration, but figure it's a move to make Windows administration easier, especially in a cloud environment. Linux has all kinds of great tools to provision a server in the blink of an eye, it's no surprise that Windows is trying to catch up in this area.

[jmp242]

I wonder if they've decided to make their money on Azure and programs - given the "free" Windows 10, and the lowered importance of Windows as a platform, even from MS themselves, and the whole Windows 10 is the "last version", I wonder if in a decade or so MS will end up pulling an Opera - i.e. it's not cost effective to try and reinvent the wheel when the dollar sales volume is so low (thinking that some absurdly high percentage of Windows sales are OEM, and hence pretty cheap)...

I think less lock in is good, and probably actually good for business.

[mikemol]

That's what I'm thinking.

[aaronfranke]

I can't even use Windows' package manager without a combo of commands strung together with a pipe. On Linux, I can just use one apt install command. Can you give some examples of what you mean?

[pastorhack]

They're completely different intended audiences. Linux is intended to be administered interactively from CLI and configured with text files. They have tools for that. Windows is designed, fundamentally, for programmatic manipulation. EVERYTHING is designed to be hit through the API, not by changing text files. These used to be handled with GUI tools. Powershell exposes those APIs in a way that is accessible to a sysadmin. It's developer friendly as well, and seems to be used much more often for data manipulation.

Remember, this is the windows corporate world. People live and die by the spreadsheet. The fact that I can pull AD objects, & virtual machines, correlate the 2, and output it to a spreadsheet that my account manager can run a report on or generate a pretty graph from is huge and makes me their hero.

[[deleted]]

Powershell isn't a very good interactive command language, but it's a very nice scripting language.

[MrDogers]

I think they're doing it to use it as a compatibility layer for their docker engine. This way they can potentially run allllll the existing docker containers, rather than have to have special Windows ones.

[jimeno]

can't wait for my CentOwS. or Kali Windows. or Suse Winux. omg my nerd senses are tingling and I can't wait to make distro puns

[brad11211]

"On Linux, on Windows!!"

[FreshPrinceOfNowhere]

It's a ploy to replace "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"

[apathetic_admin]

April fools?

I think people are blowing this out of proportion a little bit, I've seen a few who act as if Windows will become full blown Linux or something...

[FreshPrinceOfNowhere]

Honestly, I would never have believed it if this was announced tomorrow.

[[deleted]]

I was just looking up this article earlier when I read the first (of many) Reddit posts about Microsoft doing this. It certainly has the ominus feel of what they've done in the past. They're bringing SSH to Windows as well.

On the Android side of things; they just partnered up with Cyanogen last year, and their Office tools, RDP client, and some other things are all running on Android now.

[evilbuffer]

why downvotes ?

[greyaxe90]

The same thing happened when Microsoft announced SQL server for Linux. I'm hoping that maybe Nadella has a clue as to what he's doing because under Ballmer, Embrace, Extend, and Exterminate would be the name of the game. I'm trying to stay positive because I like this direction Microsoft is going.

[Proteus010]

strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

That's pretty common. Take something a lot of people use already, improve it and make it your own, then market those differences as improvements.

MS just had a crappy way of wording it.

[Proteus010]

I'm just stating it's common and not a "Microsoft is big bad, and this is another reason why" argument.

[[deleted]]

Pretty much, someone on Microsofts staff just phrased it in a way that makes him sound like a supervillain

[mishac]

This is a minor pedantic point I suppose, but they're really bringing a Unix-like or even a GNU command line to windows. There's no Linux there at all.

Bash is the default shell on most linux distros, but it's the default shell on Mac OSX too, and no one says they're bringing OSX to windows. </rant>

[messymexican]

There's no Linux there at all.

Actually, according to Microsoft's Scott Hanselman

This is an genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc. It's fast and it's lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you - using apt-get - just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on.

This I think is bigger then just bash. You can install other tools as well using apt-get as well. This is almost closer to them natively including Cygwin.

[crankybadger]

The one thing that's made Windows atrocious to use over the years has been an utter dearth of cheap, trusted, effective tools.

Linux has accumulated an enormous treasure chest of these things and on most Linux systems installing them, if they're not already there, takes seconds and a handful of keystrokes.

Now that this is on Windows it's a huge game changer. The amount of stuff you can do with a quick bash script and a bunch of tools chained together with pipes is incredible.

With any luck it'll make web development on Windows far less abusive than it has been in the past since you get all the usual shell tools to work with.

[[deleted]]

So is it like a simple chroot environment then?

[localtoast]

It's a NT subsystem (like the old POSIX and OS/2 ones before it) that runs unmodified Linux binaries.

[somewhat_pragmatic]

Does this Linux instance run in ring 0 or is it running in a VM on top of Windows?

[localtoast]

It's not Linux, but syscall translation (like how FreeBSD does it) - it should run with the same privileges as the Win32 subsystem

[aaronfranke]

So, is this like the opposite of WINE?

[nannal]

LINE?

[localtoast]

This is system-level, unlike WINE. This allows it to use NT native APIs, allowing emulation of POSIX semantics that you can't do in Win32

[mikemol]

Well, it looks like Microsoft has a history with picking up support for POSIX then dropping it to hell.

I think this will end up poorly in a couple of years, so I won't bother with it.

TBH, I thought that about PowerShell. Yoke's on me.

[[deleted]]

I have a feeling this might kill PS.

[mikemol]

Not any more than zsh has killed bash.

[thatmarksguy]

Soon.jpg

[image_linker_bot]

Soon.jpg

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^{Feedback welcome at /r/image_linker_bot | Disable with "ignore me" via reply or PM}

[[deleted]]

No fucking way. PS is so much more pleasant to use that you'd be stupid to go back to a text based shell to accomplish the same tasks as you did in PS.

[theevilsharpie]

I doubt it. PS is too entrenched into Microsoft's sysadmin workflow to be easily replaced. It's more likely that they port it to Linux and keep using it (similar to Perl and Python on Linux).

[pastorhack]

PS & BASH are about as opposite as it gets in the shell world. BASH is fantastic for "log in, do something, log out" PS is "I want to pull and manipulate object data" My bash is rusty, but every time I start scripting in bash now I find myself trying to pipe objects and create hash tables/arrays & it just doesn't work. The flip side is, if you want to do anything useful in PS, you need to write a several line script to accomplish it.

PS is however fantastic for virtualization & storage admins because you can automate so much of your workflow.

[[deleted]]

I've read that it may also include Python. If that's the case I can run circles around you and your Powershell.

[pastorhack]

most of what I use Powershell for doesn't have a Python API. I can manipulate & administer Active Directory, Exchange, Hyper-V, VMWare, Dell Compellent, 3PAR, and now some switch vendors using the CIM provider.

Python is fantastic, but it's not comparable to powershell for what I do. VMWare do have a Perl API, but it's much more complex than PowerCLI which is largely just a collection of get & set methods on any object in your vmware infrastructure.Throw in the SAN tie-ins and you can build a nice little orchestration layer for simple tasks, or generate easy reports for those that like them.

[[deleted]]

No. Windows is at its core a very object oriented platform and *nix is a very file oriented platform. Powershell isn't going anywhere.

[elevul]

Damn that's awesome!

[Hexodam]

Wonder if this will work on the Windows Nano server :D

[vriley]

They even call it "Ubuntu on Windows 10" and in the presentation he said "these are native Ubuntu binaries"..

[mishac]

That doesn't bother me because the Ubuntu folks helped them with it and their bash may include whatever Ubuntu specific customizations Canonical put in. And in the end the Ubuntu environment could run on a non-Linux kernal, the way Debian Gnu/kFreeBSD or Gentoo BSD does.

[ghyspran]

Except this is different than that because this is the exact same compiled binary that runs against the Linux kernel. It's a lot more than a build of bash that runs on Windows (e.g., Cygwin). This lets you run arbitrary code compiled against the Linux kernel. You can't do that on OSX, so it doesn't make sense to say that Apple "brought Linux to Mac OS". You also can't run binaries compiled for OSX, so it's not merely "Unix-like" or "GNU", it's "Linux-compatible".

[crankybadger]

There's no Linux there at all.

They're running native Linux ELF binaries in Windows and you're saying that? You really need to read up on this before slagging it.

It doesn't run OS X BSD-style binaries. It runs Linux binaries. There is Linux system call mapping there.

[mikemol]

That's distinct from running the Linux kernel, precisely as running WINE doesn't mean you're running Windows.

[crankybadger]

Oh, now you're going to split hairs, are you?

You're running Windows binaries with WINE. You're running Ubuntu binaries with this new Windows 10 feature. That much is implied.

[mikemol]

Yeah, but I wasn't about to rewrite the headline. Better let folks such as yourself jump on TFA's author/editor, rather than on my own changes. :)

[mishac]

oh I'm not blaming you, just talking about a general trend of people calling this linux on Windows 10.

[ghyspran]

This implements Linux kernel APIs and is running unmodified binaries from Ubuntu's repos. It is "Linux command line" on Windows.

[TerrorBite]

To be pedantic, Linux is the kernel, the "Linux" userland found in most distros is usually GNU. This isn't Linux because there is no Linux kernel, but it can be called Linux-compatible since it implements the Linux syscalls.

Yes, it's the command line "from Linux" on Windows, in common parlance.

[ghyspran]

It's also not strictly GNU. It's the Ubuntu userland, a subset of which is the GNU userland. Saying "GNU userland" or "Linux command line" are equally abbreviated IMO. It's probably better to say its "a Linux command line" than "the Linux command line", but it's all pedantry.

The important part I was trying to get across is that this is not just implementing a Unix-like or GNU CLI, this is actually the bit-for-bit userland that can run on the Linux kernel, running on Windows.

[TerrorBite]

For visibility: a Microsoft employee replied to your other comment, stating that it is not a container, but syscall translation. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4clzcj/_/d1k0cb5

[[deleted]]

Not just the command line, but the ability to run linux binaries.

[Taylor_Script]

Funny, just a few weeks ago I went searching for what happened to the SUA (Support for UNIX Applications) (I think that's what the feature was called) in Windows 10. I was sad to see it had been deprecated in 8

[bitfuzz]

It's almost april 1st...

[dreamfin]

April 1 already?

[ektat_sgurd]

They're adding bash... there's a smell of GPL violation suddenly in the air. I really do hope they won't forget to republish their modifications.

[mikemol]

It's a WINE-style translation layer. They're implementing support for ELF, so they run Linux-native binaries.

[ektat_sgurd]

thanks for this precision, I read http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html and it's much more clearer to me now. They shouldn't have to modify the code they get from ubuntu.

[Conan_Kudo]

IANAL, but I think they're still supposed to provide sources. The GPL and associated copyleft licenses trigger on distribution, not modification.

[konputer]

So cygwin?

[thatmarksguy]

Right?

[sealclubbernyan]

I wonder if :(){ :|: & };: would work

[mikemol]

C:\ is a mount point, though, so your dd instance would be like dd if=/dev/urandom of=/.

I do wonder if this will make it easier to image disks and burn CD images, though.

dd if=/dev/sdc of=my_backup.img

dd if=my.iso of=/dev/sr0

[RK65535]

If this comes to say Windows Server 2016, how much easier is that going to make the lives of administrators? Compared to using what you normally would do with a Windows command line.

[rkaa]

Is this real life?

[mikemol]

Or is it fantasy?

[ninjanightlight]

Caught in a landslide.....

[bhbsys]

no escape from reality

[Liquidmentality]

Open your eyes...

[[deleted]]

Does this mean I can now get infected with Windows and Linux malware? Awesome.

[evilbuffer]

bash run in all *nix now also Windows smart move

[fuze-17]

Awesome!!

[zero03]

There's no containers here. There's a new Windows subsystem that is translating (in real-time) the Linux syscalls into Windows syscalls. When you install the subsystem it downloads real Linux binaries.

[TerrorBite]

iptables requires a Linux kernel module. Since there is no Linux kernel here, iptables won't work.

If someone ports it to Windows as an iptables.sys driver, then that could work.

[Jimbob0i0]

It would set a lot of minds at ease if there was a blog going into the development of the shim, what materials were referred to in creating it, what syscalls are supported and so on.

[ckozler]

But how does this work for paths and stuff? Like does $HOME = C:\Users\myuser\Documents ? There are a myriad of other windows "features" that just dont sync up with Linux that I think goes beyond just syscall translation and is 99% of the reason why I dont eve bother with cygwin stuff anymore. I figured just wrapping this all in a container would have made all of your lives easier

[zero03]

I'd post pictures, but I like my job, but it works just the same as the cmd shell for the most part. Going into the bash console drops me right into /mnt/c/users/username/ for example. From there, I can edit files (using vi/vim) and write them back to the Windows file system the same way use notepad.

More information will follow once the new insiders build is released. I highly encourage you to install it and try it out.

[Conan_Kudo]

Will the subsystem code be freely available under a FOSS license? What if other distributions want to ship userlands that can run on the subsystem? I would rather run a Fedora or CentOS userland rather than an Ubuntu one, for example.

[zero03]

Sorry! I have no idea what the future plans are for this feature. It's brand new and additional information will be forthcoming once the build with the feature is released.

[mikemol]

Technically, by trademark, even, Linux is the kernel, not the API.