Microsoft Brings the Linux Command Line to Windows

Apr 05, 2016

Windows users will soon have native access to the Bash shell.

At the Build 2016 developer conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu's version of the classic Bash shell will soon be coming to Windows 10. Bash support on Windows will allow developers to run Linux command-line tools and utilities natively on the Windows platform.
 
Microsoft's Mike Harsh explains in a blog post, "...we built new infrastructure within Windows -- the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) -- upon which we run a genuine Ubuntu user-mode image provided by our great partners over at Canonical, creators of Ubuntu Linux."

Canonical created an image of Ubuntu, without the Linux kernel, to run Ubuntu user mode on WSL. As a result of this work, users can simply type bash in the Start menu of Windows 10, and the system will open the Bash shell in the Windows command prompt console.

Developers can now use Windows to run Bash scripts, as well as command-line tools like ssh, rsync, wget, sed, awk, grep and many more. You can install new command-line tools or utilities just by running apt-get in the Bash shell. Developers will also be able to access the filesystems for Ubuntu and Windows directly from the Bash shell and work on files using Linux command-line tools. Support for running command-line Ubuntu applications in Windows will arrive with the next major update, codenamed Redstone 1, slated for release this summer.

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