Windows to Have Better CLI

MickyJ writes "The command line interface to the Windows Server OS will be changed to the new Monad Shell (MSH), in a phased implementation to take place over the next three to five years. 'It will exceed what has been delivered in Linux and Unix for many years', so says Bob Muglia, a Senior VP at Microsoft." More from the Tom's Hardware article: "The language in Muglia's comment offers the first clear indication that WMI may be yet one more component being left behind, as Microsoft moves away from portions of Windows architecture that have historically been vulnerable to malicious attack."

Balls?

[Grave_Rose]

Unix have no Monads.

Gr@ve_Rose

Re:Balls?

[DenDave]

And if they did, it would be GPL and probably be called....

Yep.. gonads...

GNU/Gonads...

gonads.org??

Re:Balls?

[TheoMurpse]

GONADS:
GONADS Ovaries Nads Are Different Sexualorgans

Re:Balls?

[ondrasek]

Well... I've played with technological preview of Monad. Being bash addict, I must however admit, that Monad offers functionality beyong imagination of modern Linux shells. It passes objects through pipes instead of text and is strictly object oriented. It uses a model of namespaces, so in Windows, you are able to browse registry, file systems, environment variables, etc. in unified way.

The authors claim, that it's modelled after the VMS shells. VMS seems to regain its fame in Microsoft, with Windows NT kernel being originally designed by Dave Cutler - a VMS guru.

Monad really rocks and is worth trying.

Way to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The language in Muglia's comment offers the first clear indication that WMI may be yet one more component being left behind, as Microsoft moves away from portions of Windows architecture that have historically been vulnerable to malicious attack."

1. Write complex management interface
2. Shore up security holes over many years of use and testing
3. Ditch for new immature code
4. ?
5. Profit!

If they're ditching WMI it *won't* be for security reasons.

Re:Way to go!

[capt.Hij]

Number three could be expanded to: "ditch for new immature code which will take 3-5 years to implement new technology when completely workable alternatives exist and could be easily adapted." Should it really take a company with Microsoft's resources to take 3-5 years to implement a new scripting language? Are the permissions system that broken that it takes so much effort to plug the holes? Should I stop begging the question?

Monad? Rather than...

[dyfet]

Because they couldnt get a full pair? I found the implications of the name too humorous to pass commenting on...

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft ignoring the command line is just as silly as ignoring the Internet. It's only taken them longer to realise because only power-users and sysadmins are affected instead of every user.

Re:It's about time

[selderrr]

what I find the strangest, it that they need so much time to develop it... they have such a pile of cash, and have used it before to pump out software at breakneck speeds (and actually break their neck as with internet explorer) to crush competitors. The fact that this CLI will take so long to develop means that either they don't take it seriously and won't invest big bucks, or means that they take it very seriously and don't want to screw it up again. but even in the last case : the proposed planning is a very careful one

Re:It's about time

[ILikeRed]

Don't forget about your example that Internet Explorer was not originally a Microsoft product:

• They took the code from a project called Mosiac
• They made a deal with a company called Spyglass to use their source code from Mosiac
• The deal was for a small quarterly payment and a big percentage of sales of Internet Explorer
• They screwed both Netscape and their partner Mosiac by giving it away for free - undercutting the competition and avoiding all royalties to Spyglass - putting them out of business also.

So maybe they just could not find any BSD based CLI or naive proprietary company to screw out of a good CLI? You have to admit though - that is quite some business innovation - Bill's pure genius at it's best. I heard Spyglass finally got a few million out of their lawsuit. It just amazes me that people don't remember these things.

Re:It's about time

[selderrr]

well, i think size is a hindrance in a certain way : there are more peopple to communicate with, and each node in that process is prone to misinterpretation or self-overestimating. however, i think that that hindrance (which is also an advantage as microsoft shows often enough) can be compensated by strong and smart leadership. I think that is the factor determining the quality of apple and the crappiness of microsoft. The bigger the ship, the better the captain needs to be !

Re:It's about time

[/ASCII]

Truth be told, Linux does a pretty lousy job of integrating the shell into the GUI as well. Shell programs should support the mouse, should respect theme color preferences and should use the X clipboard for copy and paste. There are many other ways in which the CLI could benefit from a closer integration with the GUI.

I have written a shell that uses the X clipboard for copy and paste, available here [no-ip.org], but the other features are still missing. I hope to support using the mouse to select completions from the

Diff between xterms and fullscreen consoles.

[Richard Steiner]

A shell running in a fullscreen console would have no idea which window manager you were running, or in some cases which X server occurrence has priority for things like "themes".

Also, if X isn't running, using the X clipboard would not be very useful. :-)

There are some features that would be nice to see when a shell program is running in an xterm, but keep in mind that shell programs also have to run in environments which are totally detached from the X server...

Re:It's about time

[/ASCII]

*sigh*

Your argument is that since a feature might not be available in all situations, it is a bad idea to implement it at all. Along your line of reasoning, all GUIs are evil, since you sometimes only have terminal access. Hell, if I'm stranded on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, I don't even have a computer, so any software is evil by your logic.

Of course, any feature that a shell implements should fail gracefully. In fish (my shell), if there is no X server connected, fish simply takes care of

Re:It's about time

[ScytheBlade1]

When it stops looking like DOS,

DOS:
cd C:\PROGRA~1
2k+ cmd.exe:
cd C:\Program Files

smelling like DOS,

Which is why you no longer have a true DOS enviroment... in case you haven't noticed, 2000 on up no longer uses DOS as it's initial bootloader. It's gone, and it's been gone for a bit.

and quacking like DOS.

Can't help you there, I'm still getting this weird error about not finding '/dev/hda' in this script I made... it doesn't seem to like "echo 000000000000 > /dev/{h,s}d{a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,

Re:It's about time

[ConceptJunkie]

Actually, it's quite reasonable to compare CMD to COMMAND.COM. It's changes and improvements over the former have been minimal.

Of course, I've been using 4DOS (now 4NT) for something like 15 years. I can't imagine any power user who wouldn't use something like 4NT or bash or any of number of shells with real functionality.

Re:It's about time

[cduffy]

You realize that cd C:\PROGRA~1 looks quite a lot like cd "C:\Program Files"? Still has the use of backslashes as a path separator rather than a quote character; still has the whole drive letter thing... in fact, support for long filenames is the only difference you've demonstrated.

It still has attrib, mem, and most of the other old DOS commands. dir still has the same options, and starts out by listing the drive label (if any).

Don't tell me cmd.exe doesn't look and smell like DOS.

Re:It's about time

[matth]

So they made an improvement to DOS... how does that mean it's NOT DOS? So DOS now supports more then 8 characters... that makes it not DOS? When your Linux operating system has a new bash feature it didn't used to have.. does that make it no longer bash?!?!

Re:It's about time

[Blakey Rat]

Well, yeah, but look: For home users who would be interested in the Internet in that time period, there were two OSes, Macintosh and Windows. You're arguing that Windows was "behind the Internet curve" and I'm saying that Macintosh was a lot MORE "behind the curve" than Microsoft was.

If your criteria is "Microsoft making their own web browser" then by your standards, Apple didn't start paying attention to the Internet until 2002... what sense does that make?

I'm sure Linux and Unix had PPP dialers in 199

Next Slashdot Headline

[sammykrupa]

Next Headline on Slashdot:

Microsoft Pushes Back Longhorn Until 2008 Over New CLI and Changing of "My"

Re:Next Slashdot Headline

[justforaday]

I just really hope there will be an icon on the Start menu labeled "My Command Prompt"

vaporware

[mattdm]

Bah:

"...will exceed what has been delivered in Linux and Unix for many years. It will take three to five years to fully develop and deliver."

Somehow I'm not too worried.

Re:vaporware

[HyperChicken]

It's not "vaporware"; It actually exists. You can get in on the beta for free.

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.MSHWiki [msdn.com] - How to sign up

Re:vaporware

[gl4ss]

** It's not "vaporware"; It actually exists. You can get in on the beta for free.**

why does it take 3 to 5 years to develope it to exceed what has been shipped with linux for ages then?

Re:vaporware

[mattdm]

It's not "vaporware"; It actually exists. You can get in on the beta for free.

Yeah, I actually looked at some of the sample code before posting. The "vapor" part is the in-three-to-five-years-this'll-be-better-than-Unix claim -- right now, from what I've seen, they would have been far better served to go with bash. (Excepting of course their license issues.)

Re:vaporware

[hab136]

This is what the impression the Channel 9 demo video gave me, at least.

So, you've seen the marketing materials, but haven't actually used the product?

Microsoft has excellect marketdroids and sales weasels. Their actual software doesn't usually live up to the expectations given by their marketing.

Re:vaporware

[hab136]

No, I have used it and am keeping an open mind.

You previous post strongly implied that you had only seen marketing materials and not used the product; thanks for clarifying that.

I'm not jumping to the "Oh, it's from Microsoft and it must be stopped!" conclusion that most of Slashdot seems to jump to anytime Microsoft does anything.

I work at an almost-all-Microsoft shop that develops, uses, and supports a custom application running on Windows. My comment about hype not living up to reality is from experience.

They make some good products, some bad. But almost all are hyped up beyond their actual working capabilities.

Microsoft is not unique in that respect, either.

Re:vaporware

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Even if it's not vaporware, I have a hard time believing what Unix and Linux have had available to them via bash, csh, etc over all these years will somehow be trumped by some new shell created by Microsoft of all people in no time at all.

Right, because endless feedback, coding, feature requests, bug squashing, and use of the *nix shells for how many years now isn't worth anything.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Re:vaporware

[rpozz]

Yes, I totally agree. Linux/UNIX shells have been developed, tested and improved by hundreds (thousands?) of people who use them repeatedly every day over the course of more than 20 years. How the hell is MS going to make something superior in 3-5?

Re:vaporware

[Eric604]

Because they can rip off Linux/UNIX shells that have been developed, tested and improved by hundreds (thousands?) of people over the course of more than 20 years?

Re:vaporware

[LarsWestergren]

Linux/UNIX shells have been developed, tested and improved by hundreds (thousands?) of people who use them repeatedly every day over the course of more than 20 years. How the hell is MS going to make something superior in 3-5?

I hate to be in any way sticking up for Microsoft, but don't underestimate the value of starting from a clean slate.

Apple has done some pretty nifty things, for instance launcd [slashdot.org] . I know it's not popular with everyone, but I think it was pretty cool replacing all these different scipts and daemons, and having one XML based config file. They simplified by daring to question established wisdom (the "We've always done it this way so it must be perfect" mindset.)

Actually

[bmajik]

i saw an early alpha over 2 years ago. I was blown away.

Note that prior to joining MS, i did admin and development work on linux, solaris, irix, and even hp-ux. i know my way around a unix shell pretty well. I started making noise a few years back about how awful cmd.exe is and how we need a real scriptable admin experience. Some people said "go check this out". I was blown away at what they already had.

There are some things about MSH that are really, really good. I'm looking forward to it. I'm frustrated that a lot of the early momentum it had seems to have fizzled and its now bogged down in "product development" :/ The early alphas were releasable, imo. Especially compared to cmd.exe, which is squarely awful :)

well..

[bmajik]

i see that some brilliant person modded me as "troll". nice :/

anyway, heres what i thought was cool

- entirely object based. objects are pased via pipeline composition. that means you can do something like

ls | pick name, size | tableout

ls is going to return you a collection of "file" objects. the file object has properties "name" and "size" (and lots of others). the pick command takes each incoming object, and looks for properties called name and size. it then passes down a "new" object that is a bag of the name/size combos (or, it may pass along the original file objects.. i dont remember precisely). finally, tableout is a generic formatter that takes objects and formats them one per row, where each property in the object is displayed in a column.

note that you could replace tableout with say, csvout, or maybe "Excelout"

so the pipe paradigm changes in a way thats pretty cool.

Also, because you're working with .net objects which can be reflected, you get intellisense on the commandline, like working in visual studio. you dont necessarily have to remember properties and what not from object streams - it infers them for you.

(note that a problem i asked them about when i saw the demo - if you have a pipeline where you want tab completion in stage 3, but stage 1 "modifies" state (i.e. in stage 3 you are reporting on what you deleted in stage 1) how do you get the tab complete info without doing the state change in stage one?.. they were aware of this problem and were thinking about it.. but that was years ago :)

finally, what was cool is that across MS people are buying into the idea that a commandline shell that manipulated object representations of data in a generic way was going to be the path forward for adminsterting windows. Consider that the IIS metabase is now xml instead of what it used to be.. and that msh is a shell that works on structured objects... its not coincidental.

probably..

[bmajik]

anything is possible, it's all just software right ? :)

i think the unix model fits unix really well right now, because so much of administration in unix is manipulating text.

Windows never had that - everything was locked away in some opaque object (good and bad, depending on your viewpoint).

The brain behind MSH was one of the WMI guys and he (rightfully so, i think) likes WMI but its too hard to use and too hard to author providers for (his thoughts).

But fundamentally, an inquisitive object based admini

Re:vaporware

[ssj_195]

Why should you be worried?

Because there are a surprisingly large contingent of people who define themselves by the operating system they use, and whose self-esteem is directly linked to the perceived superiority of this operating system over Microsoft Windows. During the late nineties, when Windows was truly a buggy, crashy, piece of shit, these people positively basked in the glee that came from the vindication of their chosen OS - back then, Linux truly was light-years ahead of Windows in terms of speed and stability, and geeks rejoiced in the streets.

Flash-forward to Windows 2000/ XP, and Microsoft apparently accomplished a miracle, producing a version of Windows that would literally run and run, and was still fairly nippy. Meanwhile, the writers of Linux Desktop Environments were discovering that it's very easy to be fast and light when you don't do much, or aren't particularly user-friendly, and that increased functionality almost always comes at the price of bloat.

So these people saw two pillars of the superiority of Linux (speed and stability) snatched away from them. The truly curious thing is what happened next: instead of being spurred into action by this new competition and addressing these concerns on the Linux side, these people instead simply went into a state of denial, and refused to let go of these cherished (and rapidly shrinking) areas where Linux once scored over Windows. Read through any anti-MS slashdot article on any given day and count the number of horribly outdated criticisms of Microsoft you see (BSOD's; bloat; Clippy(!)) - as a passionate believer in F/OSS, it really grieves me to see people behaving like this, rather than aiming to improve Linux to the state where it once again has many advantages over Windows.

Flash-forward to now, as one of the other areas in which Linux scores over Windows (a UNIX command-line is an awesome and enjoyable tool to use; the Windows command line, by contrast, is a rubber hammer with nails in the handle :)) may well be snatched away, and we see the same thing: people are hoping against hope that Microsoft foul it up, because if they don't another area of Linux superiority disappears, along with another shred of their self-esteem. This, I think, is why people care, and why they do not wish Microsoft well in this project, however helpful it may be to the common good.

Re:vaporware

[Arker]

This is such a load of stereotyping and questionable assumptions. The cracks about basing your self-worth on perceptions of your operating system are doubtless right on for an incredibly sad and incredibly small subset of users, but you present it almost as a universal. It's not. Many of us use many different OSs on a daily basis, and our sense of self-worth, if it's affected by such things at all, has more to do with being proud of our knowledge of them than with the characteristics themselves, regardless

Re:vaporware

[ssj_195]

he cracks about basing your self-worth on perceptions of your operating system are doubtless right on for an incredibly sad and incredibly small subset of users, but you present it almost as a universal. It's not.

This was really not my intention - "a surprisingly large" was a poor choice of words.

Linux is still far superior to Windows in terms of stability and bloat. Are the new NT-based Windows 'XP' versions more stable than the old DOS based ones? Yes, definately. Are they more stable than, say NT4? Not by much, if at all. Are they more bloated than NT4? Absolutely. Is it *possible* to install a bunch of bloat on a Linux system today? Absolutely! Is it necessary? Nope. So Linux still wins hands down on both comparisons - you can get a stable, lightweight linux install with very little work, you can get a stable, but still bloated, Windows install, but it takes more work.

Again, I can only tell you that I have never seen a BSOD (though I have seen one legitimate crash for XP). Also, KDE and GNOME most definitely are (currently) bloated - are we talking about Linux as a Desktop here, or as a server? I was referring to the former. The kernel itself remains excellent.

Windows is still given to BSODs, so that is hardly an outdated criticism. (And yes, we all know that if you know what you're doing and put in the time to properly configure it, you can get it pretty damn stable. Linux doesn't require a lot of tweaking and freaking to be stable. Like I said, in this respect the situation is pretty much how it stood in the days of NT4.)

I've honestly never seen a BSOD under XP. We have about 20 computers here on 24/7, all of which are installed by the programmer who works on them. They needed no tweaking at all for stability. I really just don't know what to tell you other than this - I find it hard to believe that we all just got lucky.

Clippy may have been abandoned, but it will always stand as a shining example of what's wrong with the MicroSoft way, so it remains a timeless reference.

OK, if that is indeed the spirit in which all of these jibes are made, then I'll concede the point :)

So, from my perspective, your post misses just about every point.

Fair enough.

Re:vaporware

[ssj_195]

I hope you're not trying to paint me as "an MS shill"; check through my posting history and you'll see that this is anything but the case.

Anyway, point by point:

Well, unfortunately for them, 2000/XP, though better than Win 9x, are still far from reality. XP still does not run and run, 2000 does not either. They slowly come to a halt, XP faster than 2000. These OS can run and run, if you put one service only on them, and tweak them for two plain days until they ressemble nothing you could work with, which is a process I call tedious, not a "miracle". I never saw one of these OS run and run, but I suppose it is acheivable. Compared to a Linux that run and run without any tweak, there is still a chasm between the two OS.

On this, we'll have to agree to disagree; I've seen XP crash a handful of times: a few times when it turned out my graphics card was faulty (this crashed Linux, too) and once when I was copying a file from my Linux comp to a friend of mine's XP comp via samba. The latter is inexcusable (but funny side-note: my friend blamed "Linux's crappy Samba implementation", even though it was his computer that crashed, not mine!). The rest of the time, my XP computer at work truly does run and run, requiring a reboot only when a critical Windows Update is required. Your experiences are apparently different.

When KDE, despite being stuffed with features at every new version, becomes more and more fast with each release.

This is true - KDE has been getting faster and more memory-friendly - check out the "top" output for KWrite (or is it Kate) under the KDE4 prototype code. I'm very pleased with the progress of KDE, and a recent talk by Robert Love (on optmising GNOME) shows that the Desktop Linux developers are very committed to reducing bloat, which I couldn't be happier about. However, the fact that KDE is getting faster either tells us that something that's always been good is getting better, or something that was slow and memory hungry before is getting better - much like Mac OS X, which started out dog-slow but which has been improving in speed with each successive release. Respectfully, I'd have to say it was the latter: on my 256MB laptop, KDE starts to swap more and much sooner than XP does (i.e. with fewer apps open). Firefox consumes far more resources than IE (although admittedly it also accomplishes far more). Having said that, the focus on the Linux side is on getting faster (I'm drooling with anticipation at XGL), so on the speed/ memory consumption side I see Linux ultimately winning out.

Now, one thing I wonder : how MSH will come superior to bash, when bash is cross-platform, and msh is not ? It destroys one of the most important features of shells ...

Cross-platform-ness is admirable, but a shell where objects are first-class citizens sounds pretty good to me. I determine the power of a shell by how much easier it will make my life.

Re:vaporware

[drsmithy]

So you write scripts for version 1.3 of MSH and then it goes to version 1.4 and all your scripts are broken. Jee thats really fucking helpfull. I'm not saying thats how it is or will be but it's seems very possible with Microsoft running the show.

Right. Because it's not like one of the keystones of Microsoft's empire is backwards compatibility. Nope, they never go out of their way to make sure old stuff still works on newer versions. That's Microsoft, all right.

Re:vaporware

[tsotha]

Back to reality from your piece of FUD :

I can't belive you wrote that page-long screed without even reading what he wrote. I see this kind of crap on slashdot all the time. The only "Microsoft shill" there is the strawman you set up. I'll bet if I go back through your posting history you've made the same speech several times.

I'm so sick of this kind of brainless Microsoft bashing. Most of the people here parrot the group-think line without having any idea what they're talking about. I suspect that means you, since my experience with XP is much different.

Right now at work I'm using RHEL for development and XP for gaming/taxes/whatever at home. Guess what? XP, in my experience, is more stable than Redhat. That's not shilling, it's just my experience. I've never (not once) had XP crash on me. I wish I could say the same for Linux.

It's true Microsoft pays "journalists" to come up with nice reviews in trade magazines. They know that's what non-technical management reads to make up it's collective mind. The only way Linux is going to make inroads into the corporate desktop is by being demonstrably better than Windows. That way the one or two honest tradesheet writers will write a nice article to give some backing to those of us that want to support OSS.

But how can Linux improve if a substantial portion of its advocates can't even fucking see it's not perfect? As the grandparent noted, every release of Windows narrows the gap. If Microsoft adds a shell that I can use from a remote machine that removes one of the three reasons I don't use Windows for serious work:

• no shell (cmd doesn't count)
• viruses
• I want to support OSS

I hope there never comes a day when the only reason I have to run Linux is the third reason. I'll never be able to sell that to the boss.

Oh, and by the way, don't bother accusing me of having "no knowlege" of the FOSS world. I've been writing and using FOSS since the internet was born. Have you?

Re:vaporware

[Blakey Rat]

With MS shills, it has come to a point where they firmly believe that BSOD does not exist anymore in WinXP or later !!!

Of course it exists, I don't think I've ever seen anybody claim it doesn't exist. But it can only be caused by *hardware problems*... that's the part that Linux users seem to miss all the time.

If WinXP bluescreens more than Linux, the only thing that tells you is that most WinXP computers have cheap faulty hardware in them... and really, isn't that common sense anyway? (After all, anybody who knew PCs well enough to use Linux also knows how to build a computer with quality components.)

Hmm...

[Sinryc]

Now, I don't know much about this but I do have a few questions. What all will this be likely to change? Also, once the biggest company in the world uses it, how will it be so secure? If so many people are using it, arent they more likely to find problems with it? Or am I just uneducated?

So Apple IS faster....

[Anonymous Coward]

They change their entire platforms over 2 years, and MS will spend 3-5 years changing the default shell? :p

ooooh

[geoffspear]

In only 3 to 5 years, they'll be able to develop technology that's better than what exists today? What innovation!

How about announcing great new technology that actually works today?

Re:ooooh

[Timesprout]

You obviously missed the CLI Clippy announcement, or Typpy as he is to be now known.

Re:ooooh

[pegr]

Actually, if you look at the logic from what MS has said, they just admitted that UNIX shells are better that Microsoft shells. They have promised something better, but that admission by itself reveals the depth of fear-and-loathing they have for UNIX.

Sorry your shot of cash to Bay didn't work out better for you, Bill*.

(*Not really...)

Re:ooooh

[metlin]

The beta has been available for sometime now [msdn.com] - apparently you need Win2003 or .Net v2 for it to be installed.

From someone I know who uses it:

• Very slow, but the scripting was sweet, though not as compact as unix
  
• Reminds you of a bastard child of unix+VMS
  
• You can write commands in C#, kinda like servlets where you can extend a base class
  
• It's an OO way of doing things, but unlike Perl/Python which are screenscrapers, Monad scripts can pipe out and pipe in objects - and everything happens through typed vars, not screenscraping.

Re:ooooh

[dysprosia]

Monad scripts can pipe out and pipe in objects

This is trivial to implement with a programming language that supports serialization, esp. if it can serialize to stdin/stdout.. In Objective-C, it's a simple matter of objc_open_typed_stream(stdin, OBJC_READONLY); and objc_open_typed_stream(stdout, OBJC_WRITEONLY); and read:'ing and write:'ing to the stream.

Re:ooooh

[ByteSlicer]

unlike Perl/Python which are screenscrapers, Monad scripts can pipe out and pipe in objects

I'm sure a Python app can send serialized (pickled) objects to a stdio pipe.

Better than Bash?

[AnriL]

Better than Bash? I guess they'll be using Zsh then. :-)

Windows already has an excellent CLI

[Weaselmancer]

...you just gotta go download it from here. [cygwin.com]

Re:Windows already has an excellent CLI

[Yuioup]

Yeah but the problem with Cygwin is that it's Open Source...

Y

Re:Windows already has an excellent CLI

[Kazymyr]

The parent may have been modded funny, but that doesn't make it any less true.

I refuse to use it!

[Roofus]

Unless I can get transparent terminals. That is what really holds back MS in the server market. I mean, how useful is a shell unless you can see through it?

Re:I refuse to use it!

[akzeac]

True transparent terminals? I'm still waiting for those in Linux!

Re:I refuse to use it!

[jonatha]

Still waiting? Why?

I've got an infinite number of transparent terminals up on the desktop already. Each time I start one I can't find the damn close icon to shut it down...

Re:I refuse to use it!

[jellomizer]

Bla Bla Bla waste resources. Did you ever look at the system monitor and see what the difference in resources are if you have a transperant window is?
I havent seen any difference. Transparent shells are acutally quite usefull. When I am reading documents on how to install a program I never installed before I usually have the webpage open and when I am typing in the text I can see the Website threw the shell and make sure I am typing it in correctly. (because I am a bad speller it is usefull) also it is quicker to type then cut and paist a lot of the time. espectilly when you need options that may be on the screen but not part of the example.

I've already got one, you see...?

[rrognlie]

And it's vera nice!

Can you say bash from cygwin?!? thought you could

Cut/Copy/Paste

[LanMan04]

You mean a CLI that you can cut, copy, and paste to/from? Innovation!

About time MS got on the fucking ball in terms of CLI.

Re:Cut/Copy/Paste

[ssj_195]

You can already copy from/ paste to Window's default CLI (highlight text and press ENTER to copy; right-click to paste - same with cygwin). I don't know about cutting, though.

hot damn.

[Vodak]

I do not care about the PR spin being put on this announcement it is a really good thing for Microsoft. The thing I hate about administering a Windows server is that I have to run their terminal services in order to get remote access.

I am on dialup. A good command line interface for remote support? All I can say is HOT DAMN.

Anyone else

[ShatteredDream]

See monad and think that it's going to be an emasculated, one testicled command shell that no real man would ever touch out of a jealous regard for the family jewels?

What the fuck

[jb.hl.com]

Everyone who read the Wikipedia article on Longhorn, or indeed on Monad has known about this for a long, long time.

Legacy DOS vs Unix'ish

[B5_geek]

Is this the death of the legacy DOS commands that we have all used?

Will the c: conventions be replaced (or simply aliased) alias d:='mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/cdrom' ??

or EVEN WORSE: will I have to swap all my "\" to "/" =)
Are they finally moving to A Better Place(tm) ?

I beta tested this thing

[stormcoder]

It exists. Unfortunately, it is nasty to use. Commands are long and it makes heavy use of COM (So much for .NET). I have no doubt that it will be heavily exploited by virii and phishers. So I don't think bash is in any danger of being replaced.

Microsoft Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, MSH has been available for public beta (if you're enrolled in MSDN, anyway) for quite some time now -- I've been using it on my Windows XP box at home just to test it out. In general.. yes, it's actually quite good, and up to the standard of Bash for most tasks. It's a huge step away from the WinXP command prompt, and represents something of a climbdown for Microsoft, who said they would be moving away from the CLI in future OSes. In addition, it may amuse the /. readers (it certainly amused me

I wonder what exeeds a windowed session over SSH2?

[Yaa 101]

Don't you?

Those who do not understand UNIX....

[caluml]

Isn't this just a case of: "Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly". -- Henry Spencer.
Soon they'll be storing config in files, and have a CLI only version of their server.

Re:Those who do not understand UNIX....

[Jason Earl]

Heck, this is probably what's taking them so long to actually release Monad. It's one thing to create a scripting language, it's another thing completely to create hooks that allow you to actually administer systems with the scripting language. UNIX has the advantage that A) everything is a file, and B) nearly all configuration files are some sort of structured text.

Microsoft is all excited about being able to pipe objects on the command line, but that's really only because that's what Microsoft has to work with. All of the information that you want is locked up in some poorly documented binary file somewhere that was designed to be accessed from some sort of GUI. The beauty of UNIX's strategy is that I don't have to read some sort of API for a certain configuration object. Instead I simply eyeball the text files and use a vast array of text manipulation tools to do what needs doing.

Yeah, but

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Microsoft has never "gotten" regular expressions, and I doubt they're about to. Also, there's still the silly reliance on the file extension to tell the operating system how to handle a particular file.

About all these monad/gonad jokes...

[bheer]

For all the 13-year olds on /. who think they're funny, here's where the word monad really comes from [newadvent.org].

MSH: QuickRef

[nighty5]

A quick list of functions and examples, looks very Bourne.

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.MSHQuickStart [msdn.com]

Its about bloody time.

VBS is a peice of crap, and is way to complicated for what should be simple tasks, MSH looks pretty damn promising.

random current cmd gripes

[kisrael]

There are two and a half things that bug the hell out of me with the current CLI:

1. The tab completion behavior (the 'half' part of my 2 1/2 gripes is sometimes you have to fiddle with a registry setting to turn on tab completion). A unix shell (well, the one I'm used to, not even sure which) will complete only up to the point where its unique, and then I can hit Ctrl-D to see possible completions. A lot more predictable than tabbing through all completions that might fit what you've typed...the distinction between "characters I typed myself" and "characters showing up because I'm cycling through" has no visual cue, even though it completely controls what files get shown.

2. up arrow behavior. It took me a while to finally "get" the logic of Windows...if you type command A, then command B, then command C, then arrow back up to B and run that, pressing down will then take you to C and up will take you to A. I think that it's meant to cover a long sequence of commands that you do over and over, so you don't have to keep uparrowing, but just pressing down once per repeated command, but its much harder to keep a mental model of.

Both of these things are classic Window's trade off of predictability for perceived "user friendliness". I think hackers often prefer predicitability and ease of mental modeling, since they can always make it easier by some scripting or whatever.

On the other hand, I like that I can add "\.." to the end of a filename and get to its directory. That's something that seems logical to me that Unix shells don't generally do.

Re:random current cmd gripes

[Tim C]

I would suggest that the reason you find them unpredictable and counter-intuitive is that you're used to the way your preferred Unix shell does things.

If you liken up-arrowing in the command history to up-arrowing in a text file, if you make an edit in the file, your cursor doesn't magically fly down to the bottom of the file, it stays where it is. That, I suspect, is the reasoning behind the Windows command shell's behaviour - it stays where you left it. Think of it as editing the list of executed commands.

Yes yes language blah

[thenerdgod]

But will they swap \ for / ? THAT's what I want. The entire cosmos now uses /. er... '/'. ...though I suspect the entire cosmos DOES use /. to blather about their preferred operating system and how kids in trenchcoats are being oppressed by jonkatz or... something...

Re:Yes yes language blah

[Jugalator]

MSH supports both \ and / for directory separators, and uses - for command options, maybe also / if you want to, don't quite remember, but definitely -.

But can you _do_ anything with it?

[spauldo]

I haven't looked at the specs, since I don't work much with windows servers anymore, but I'm curious: one of the major advantages with UNIX boxes is that most of the software you work with has some sort of CLI, or at least has hooks that can read data produced from the command line.

Windows, on the other hand, has always been particularly bad about that - most apps don't have any support for that sort of thing. Scripting in the windows world has been fairly pointless. Sure, a lot of sysadmin tasks can be performed using the command line, but limitations in the shell make that a pain in the ass. CMD.exe isnt' anywhere near UNIX shells as far as programmability is concerned, and windows lacks the plethora of command line shell enhancing utilities (i.e. sed, grep, etc.) that makes the UNIX shell environment so useful?

This is talking about using COM and .NET classes - will we finally be able to hook into more applications and actually do useful things at the command line now, or will this mainly benefit programmers who are trained in OO concepts rather than sysadmins?

Magical Microsoft Moments

[ArsenneLupin]

No story about Microsoft and Unixy shells is complete without the following anecdote:

One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) happened yesterday and I thought that I'd share. Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it.

Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was holding forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting and shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise that moves to the NT platform. The product suite includes the MMS (Mortise Money Systems) windowing Monad shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of goodies like awk, sed and grep. It actually fills a nice niche for which other products (like the MMS suite) have either been too highly priced or not well enough integrated.

An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of Monad shell. He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible with existing UNIX versions of MSH.

The MPM said that the MMS shell was pretty compatible and should be able to run all UNIX scripts.

The questioner again asserted that the MMS shell was not very compatible and didn't do a lot of things right that are defined in the MSH language spec.

The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should work quite well.

This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, when another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the questioner was, in fact Peter Monad of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. (Peter Monad is the author of the Monad shell)

Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of the only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for words or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what's a body to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?

Re:Magical Microsoft Moments

[ArsenneLupin]

Where did you get this?

It's a spoof based on the (true) story about Microsoft and the Korn shell: ... when Microsoft reality collides with everybody elses... [petting-zoo.net]

Here's a screenshot!

[Anonymous Coward]

C:\> winword.exe
.___
// \
||@@|
|| ||
|\_||
\__/
_||_

It looks like you're trying to run a program. Would you like me to start WINWORD.EXE? [Y/N]

---
(courtesy of mopslik [slashdot.org]. Original post [slashdot.org].

why not posix?

[yagu]

I seem to remember Microsoft's new "scripting" and CLI mentioned before, and descriptions of its powerful features. Basically it was described as object-oriented in architecture with claims of superior technology then!

From the article: Monad was started as a project to provide a more powerful command line competitive with the BASH shell on Unix and Linux, using ideas gleaned from WMIC, but using the .NET Framework as its core component instead.

What concerns me is not Microsoft's improvement of their technology, especially their CLI (as a long time forced-to-use-DOS CLI, believe me, it's long needed the overhaul), but Microsoft's yet another implementation of a primitive that goes against quasi standards, albeit in this case a fairly high level standard.

I wonder why they wouldn't implement a POSIX compliant shell... that would go oh so far to allow portability of apps across platforms. Instead they come up with their idea of CLI.

I know there's always cygwin to handle POSIX scripts, but I find it slow, and difficult to manage effectively in the morass that is Windows. Certainly a POSIX-like interface in Window's CLI would attract more scripters if Microsoft supplied their own native implementation.

Otherwise, what is the motivation? Once again, with Microsoft's leverage and monopoly, it feels like a new "product", that if they can leverage with their monopoly, they continue their assimilation of another niche in the marketplace.

as usual, Microsoft doesn't get it

[cahiha]

Monad is the usual bloated, overly complicated "me too" product Microsoft comes up with. In fact, Monad isn't really even a shell, it's more like Tcl/Tk or perlsh. Linux has nothing to fear from this sort of thing; there are good reasons why everybody still uses the sh family of shells after 30 years despite lots of attempts at "improving" on it.

If Microsoft wanted to come up with a decent shell, they should carefully look at bash and rc, and figure out a minimal set of changes to make it compatible with their non-standard parameter and pathname syntax, and leave it at that. Or they should make careful, incremental changes to the current command interpreter.

Apocryphal Story

[Epeeist]

There is an apocryphal story about someone from MKS and an MS flack giving a joint presentation on their UNIX toolkit for Windows.

During the bit about KSH an old guy at the back kept piping up with comments like "that feature wasn't implemented properly" and "that doesn't conform to the specification". Apparently the MS flack expostulated a lot and try to cast doubt on the old guy's qualifications. It was only then that it was pointed to him that the person making the comments was David Korn.

Re:Apocryphal Story

[teknomage1]

Yeah, moral of the story: Never get in an argument with and old guy with a beard about Unix.

It's great

[lelitsch]

bash:

echo $PATH

Monad:

Private Sub echo1_CLI(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles echo1.CLI

Try

AddHandler EchoCL1.PrintLine, AddressOf Me.PrintCL1_PrintLine
PrintLine1.Print(Sys.Init.Windows.PATH)
Catch ex As Exception
Message.Show("An error occurred while printing PATH ", _
ex.ToString())

End Try

Way to go, team "miss the point by a mile"

[Alex Belits]

This "shell" has command line input (that is, continuous text that is parsed to determine its meaning and run other executables), yet the communication over "pipes" is in "objects" that have to drag around their methods, so the whole flexibility, simplicity, parsing and isolation of data source from receiver (that, if someone forgot, provides security) go right out of the window. Oh, and it allows to access various system data hierarchies -- too bad, Windows has so many of them.

The whole Unix design is based on the idea of unified file descriptor and a single filesystem tree. Windows still lacks those, and this shell is not even trying to emulate them (like what cygwin does).

Monad leverages WMI

[jsnover]

The article is completely correct when it states that Monad started with the ideas from WMIC and then applied those ideas to .NET. It is however, incorrect to think that this means that WMI is in any way being "left behind". Of the issues Admins had with WMIC is that to do non-trival processing of WMI object, you had to use XSLT or use WSH (e.g. VBSCRIPT). With Monad, Admins get full, admin-focused, command-oriented, language to manipulate WMI (as well as .NET, ADO, ADSI, XML and OLE Automation objects). It might be appropriate to compare and contrast the capabilities of Monad and WMIC but not Monad and WMI. WMI is a management infrastructure, Monad is an environment to present those capabilities via command line scripting. Said another way, the value of writing new WMI providers (and the value of existing WMI providers) increases with the availability of Monad. Jeffrey Snover Monad Architect

Re:Monad .. Gonad

[SonicBurst]

Well, to me, MoSH sounds best, but hey, I'm just a metal head.

Re:Monad .. Gonad

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From dictionary.com:

mo-nad n.

1. Philosophy. An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibnitz.

So it's a real word, and I can kinda sorta see why they chose it. I agree that it's unfortunate, though, and I think "MSH" (pronounced the obvious way) is a perfectly reasonable name.

Re:Monad .. Gonad

[DenDave]

Geesh.. I was thinking the other mash.. Through early morning fog I see visions of the things to be the pains that are withheld for me I realize and I can see... [chorus]: That Microsoft is clueless They bring on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please. I try to find a way to make all our systems relate without that ever-present slate but now I know that it's too late, and... [Chorus] The unix shell is hard to play I'm gonna learn it anyway The Linux card I'll someday lay so this is all

Re:Monad .. Gonad

[jedidiah]

The far more appropos MASH reference would be the song "suicide is painless".

Re:Better late than ....

[Ford Prefect]

It is interesting that they are now trying to implement a command line competitive with BASH....what year is this again?

The year is 1973. Apple Computations Inc. have just announced that they are switching to the cutting-edge Zilog Z80 architecture for their range of low-cost pocket calculators; Sony Industrial Consumer Electronics are making use of an innovative new Integrated Circuit for their Alpha-Max-3 video system which contains at least five separate transistors; the Duke Nukem Forever board-game has been given a favourable reception at the Entertaining Entertainment Exposition at the Crystal Palace, London, and now Micro-Soft-Ware are designing their new, BASIC-derived timesharing shell for competing against the burgeoning MULTICS.

Well, you did ask...

Re:Better late than ....

[surprise_audit]

Ah, Multics... Now there was an OS that would be really useful these days. It was possible to define security layers so that you couldn't even access your own files without being in the exact right security access level. It would be really funny watching the FBI trying to extract personal information from a properly configured Multics system, where you don't even know what the security levels are called, let alone have access to them...

Re:Better late than ....

[lpp]

Sounds like Paranoia, the RPG.

This requires RED security clearance.

What is RED security clearance and how do I get it?

Attention, User, you have requested information on a clearance level you are not authorized to know about. Please press the red button to complete your termination. Disobedience is cause for termination. Have a nice day.

Re:Nice, but not earthshattering

[/ASCII]

I've written a Unix shell that aims to have a lower learning curve than traditional shells. It does this by having a smaller and simpler syntax, and integrated help features.

There is an article about the shell here [lwn.net], and the shells homepage is here [no-ip.org].

Re:WTF?

[DaHat]

I'd suggest you take of your Microsoft bashing hat and come out side, Monad has been in public beta for nearly a year now, want to take a look?

1. You will need need a passport account. If you do not have one yet, you can sign-up for one at the beta website listed below.
2. Goto http://beta.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]
3. Log into the site using the following guest ID: mshPDC
4. Select Microsoft Command Shell
5. Select Survey in the left column
6. Register with a valid email address.
7. Wait for the information to be sent to you through email. (May take a day or two)
8. Once you receive your confirmation email, log back into http://beta.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] for the content

Re:WTF?

[beforewisdom]

I suggest, in turn, that you take off your "ms basher basher" hat, think about what I said and about what you wrote. What you referr to is beta software and beta software that does not ship installed with windows. So, it comes down to the situation that if you need to deal with someone's window box your CLI is still a tiny shell window with what is essentially a castrated version of dos bat.

Re:WTF?

[Tim C]

You said:

However, until I actually see it implemented I am regarding it as vapor ware and the latest noise from the MS executives version of WWF trash talk.

The GP merely pointed out that there is a beta implementation available. Therefore, widely-installed or not, it's hardly vapour-ware.

You may have meant "shipped with Windows", but you actually said "implemented".

Re:WTF?

[zulux]

1. You will need need a passport account. If you do not have one yet, you can sign-up for one at the beta website listed below.
2. Goto http://beta.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]
steps removed......
7. Wait for the information to be sent to you through email. (May take a day or two)
8. Once you receive your confirmation email, log back into http://beta.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] for the content


Sweet Jesus - and to think that some people think that Microsoft software is easy to use.

Re:Been testing MSH since october.....

[jsnover]

Apologizes for the lack of updates. We've been heads down getting things things finished up for some deadlines. We'll be dropping a new version on betapace sometime next week. It is about 95+% language complete and interop with existing external programs has greatly improved. We'd love you (and everyone else) to give it a try and let us know what you don't like or how we can make it better. jps