Fresh from an almost missable US launch of Zune, Microsoft was back on familiar ground Tuesday touting server, security and admin software to reassure shareholders the company's future is bright. Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools opened the company's IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain, by promising a third, and final, beta of Windows Longhorn Server during the first-half of 2007 with full product availability by years' end. Microsoft also officially launched its PowerShell.
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Member since:2005-08-11
Member since:2005-07-05
But it isn't though.
I recently had two similar hard drive failures. One was on my Linux machine and the other was on a friend's Windows laptop (Sure his laptop is XP, but I've seen Vista builds and the directory structure, while better, is still problematic).
On Linux, I simply copied all the contents of my home directory to a portable hard drive, replace the bad drive, reinstalled Linux and copied everything back. I had to configure a couple of minor things a bit, but overall, it was a simple process.
On my friend's Windows machine, the only damage to files was done in the Windows System32 directory. Everything else was intact. However, it was almost impossible to restore his drive because things were sprawled out all over the system.
The first two things Microsoft could do to clean their directory structure would be have home directories and limit regular users ability to save anything outside of that, and get rid of the stupid alphabet partitions. They are retarded.
Edited 2006-11-16 07:36
Member since:2005-11-29
I believe any change to cmd.exe is welcome change. Windows has been lacking a functional shell. Just because it doesn't implement the "xx" standard of shell programming doesn't make it bad.
If you don't know by now, Microsoft hardly ever codes with Interop in mind (As far as other platforms go) and it will be a while since that changes.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the PowerShell syntax and it will allow Windows to become more community oriented. (Submitting Scripts to automate OS tasks)
There's been a bunch of community oriented stuff popping up. Gadgets, IE7 Addons, and now Powershell scripts?
If anything I'd call this an extremely good thing for Microsoft.
Member since:2005-07-06
It should also be noted that there's more to Windows management than cmd. PowerShell unifies cmd, WSH, WMIC, and more. Most people probably aren't writing batch language scripts to manage servers, but many do use the other above technologies interactively and in scripts.
PowerShell gives more access to the system, simplifies coding against existing technologies, and is more accessible than the previous technologies for new users. It's also going to be baked into MS' server products (Exchange and MOM first) and later the system itself, with MMC integration, cmd utilities being replaced with cmdlets and applications either built atop cmdlets or using them to more directly expose functionality to the shell.
Edited 2006-11-16 00:39
Member since:2005-11-14
If you don't know by now, Microsoft hardly ever codes with Interop in mind (As far as other platforms go) and it will be a while since that changes
Which breaks one of the most important feature of a shell : be compatible with at least Korn Shell.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the PowerShell syntax and it will allow Windows to become more community oriented. (Submitting Scripts to automate OS tasks)
That would be good but I dount it will, as PowerShell depends on .NET. Which means when .NET changes, it can make your shell change behaviour.
A shell should not depend on anything more than a C library. There's a reason it's called a shell, not a script language.
Member since:2005-07-06
A lots of software use MS command line tools. They're mostly needed for automation purposes, of course, as there is no other goal in using a command line tool vs a GUI for non-automation operations.
If you look carefully, many server softwares make broad usage of such tools. Sometimes you got aware of such usage if anything goes wrong and you have a log file to examine.
"Monad" is much more than a simple enhanced shell. Just to name one, while you can only pass text parameters to various Unix shells, you can pass complex objects to Monad / PowerShell scripts, paving the road to much more complex scripts.
Member since:2005-07-06
No. This is flat out wrong. There is no restriction on how programs can communicate with eachother on UNIX. In fact, this doesn't really have anything to do with the shell at all. Most UNIX programs pass text streams between eachother via pipes by _convention_. You could also pass arbitrarily complex "objects" using text. Hell, we could even be trendy, if we wanted, and use XML for the markup.
If you really wanted an object orriented shell on UNIX that communicates via binary blobs through rigid APIs, you could just run the python interpreter interactively.
Member since:2005-11-14
A lots of software use MS command line tools. They're mostly needed for automation purposes, of course, as there is no other goal in using a command line tool vs a GUI for non-automation operations
No other goal ? I see at least two others : headless administration and fast remote control.
If you look carefully, many server softwares make broad usage of such tools
That's because servers don't need a GUI to run ...
"Monad" is much more than a simple enhanced shell. Just to name one, while you can only pass text parameters to various Unix shells, you can pass complex objects to Monad / PowerShell scripts, paving the road to much more complex scripts
That's because the few input systems that we have, like the keyboard, only contains text on it.
I wonder how you input your complex objects to your commands without using text.
I also wonder what is the use for your complex objects, as we can already control pretty much anything with a basic Unix shell.
Member since:2005-07-22
""Monad" is much more than a simple enhanced shell. Just to name one, while you can only pass text parameters to various Unix shells, you can pass complex objects to Monad / PowerShell scripts, paving the road to much more complex scripts."
And there lies the problem. Who wants to code complex shell scripts? scripts have to be simple. Otherwise you should be using some programming language. You need to first understand the unix shell to assert something like that. The power of the unix shell is that you only need text, plain text, to use it.
You should read Mastering UNIX Shell scripting, from John Wiley and Sons.
Member since:
2006-03-15
Just wondering why someone would bother to learn a whole slew of commands for Windows. Generally speaking, people who want the power of a command line do not bother to deploy Windows and people who want Windows don't want half the features to be hidden in the command line. I realize that this is a direction Microsoft wants to go but how many people seriously use the command line tools for Windows 2003 (DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, Services, etc?)
Before Microsoft hopes to get anywhere with a command line, they need to clean up their directory structure, ax the registry and simplify things down quite a lot. Unix was built from the ground up with the assumption of configuring everything from the command line. The last time anything was really built for the command line in Microsofts world was during the days of DOS. Unix is far more than just passing parameters to applications through the command line.