Ask HN: Are there no shells for Windows other than PowerShell and CMD?

11 pointspiuvas3y ago21 comments

And I don't mean terminal emulators, because I know Console Host, WT, Kitty, Alacritty. I mean shells like bash, zsh.

How come there are so many alternatives for linux but none for Windows?

Nothing against PowerShell, I'm just curious.

21 comments

Why not PowerShell, though? If you ever want to directly administer Windows through the command-line, PowerShell is increasingly your only bet, as older CMD executables are deprecated.

I'll suffix with my opinion that PowerShell is much nicer than many POSIX shells, especially given its hybrid object-oriented + functional pipeline paradigm.

pixl973y ago

And following on this, for the longest time Windows only had extremely limited ability to manage itself via the command line and things were very haphazard on how you could manage them on the CLI. You were probably just using the CLI to edit the registry and restart serivces/executables at the best case.

This is really the reason there are no shells for windows. There wasn't anything for the shell to do! No massive collection of small executables linux *nix that were shell oriented. No system design around CLI management.

Around Windows 2016 or so I would say this changed with Powershell and with a number of design changes by Microsoft that allowed much better remote management (and not fully depending on GPO to do it), and I even run into some customers that have headless windows servers these days.

cloudking3y ago

You can get Linux shells and environments in Windows via WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

pixl973y ago

Yep, WSL is the way to go, specifically WSL2 if you want more IO performance.

Very convenient on my work laptop where I can't replace the OS.

naikrovek3y ago

bash, zsh, ksh, etc., those aren't shells for Windows, though, are they?

2 more replies

andrewf3y ago

There's 4DOS descendent Take Command: https://jpsoft.com/

BiggsHoson3y ago

+1 for Take Command. I've used it since its mid-90s iteration, and still use it nearly every day. It has a great mix of command prompt features and batch file language enhancements.

anigbrowl3y ago

Way back when there were a few substitutes for command.com, but none of them offered sufficiently utility to gain traction outside of the IT department. And since it's now trivially easy to run a unix virtual machine and do your command line stuff there if you want, I'm not sure there's much inventive to develop alternatives.

runjake3y ago

There's plenty. Do more research.

- WSL -> Bash (Best, IMHO)

- Cygwin (old, slow IMHO)

- Git Bash (essentially includes bash for windows with a bunch of the more popular add-ons.

But, PowerShell is a pretty great shell, too. Make sure you're running the latest 7.x version, as it's improved tons.

metadat3y ago

What classification does Cygwin fall under?

It can run most or all of the widespread *nix shells.

HiramKHurley3y ago

There's Yori http://www.malsmith.net/yori/

Kukumber3y ago

I personally don't count powershell as a shell, it's more like an interpreted/jit compiled .net interactive CLI 'shell', hence why it is slow to start and to run

A shell is a program that takes your commands and send them to the OS, it doesn't compile anything

naikrovek3y ago

a shell is what you type your commands into. a shell interprets those commands, pipes between them, and to and from file handles, and acts as the interface between the human and the things they want to do.

bash is FAR slower than PowerShell, and it's interpreted.

Kukumber3y ago

> bash is FAR slower than PowerShell, and it's interpreted.

That's not true at all

I have a demonstration that's very telling:

    time pwsh

    time bash

Post your result

It's sad that nowadays people do not understand the purpose of a shell

1 more reply

spacechild13y ago

I always use the Msys2 shell.

melony3y ago

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-bash

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

21 comments

delta_p_delta_x3y ago

Why not PowerShell, though? If you ever want to directly administer Windows through the command-line, PowerShell is increasingly your only bet, as older CMD executables are deprecated.

I'll suffix with my opinion that PowerShell is much nicer than many POSIX shells, especially given its hybrid object-oriented + functional pipeline paradigm.

pixl973y ago

cloudking3y ago

You can get Linux shells and environments in Windows via WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

pixl973y ago

Yep, WSL is the way to go, specifically WSL2 if you want more IO performance.

Very convenient on my work laptop where I can't replace the OS.

naikrovek3y ago

bash, zsh, ksh, etc., those aren't shells for Windows, though, are they?

2 more replies

andrewf3y ago

There's 4DOS descendent Take Command: https://jpsoft.com/

BiggsHoson3y ago

+1 for Take Command. I've used it since its mid-90s iteration, and still use it nearly every day. It has a great mix of command prompt features and batch file language enhancements.

anigbrowl3y ago

runjake3y ago

There's plenty. Do more research.

- WSL -> Bash (Best, IMHO)

- Cygwin (old, slow IMHO)

- Git Bash (essentially includes bash for windows with a bunch of the more popular add-ons.

But, PowerShell is a pretty great shell, too. Make sure you're running the latest 7.x version, as it's improved tons.

metadat3y ago

What classification does Cygwin fall under?

It can run most or all of the widespread *nix shells.

HiramKHurley3y ago

There's Yori http://www.malsmith.net/yori/

Kukumber3y ago

I personally don't count powershell as a shell, it's more like an interpreted/jit compiled .net interactive CLI 'shell', hence why it is slow to start and to run

A shell is a program that takes your commands and send them to the OS, it doesn't compile anything

naikrovek3y ago

bash is FAR slower than PowerShell, and it's interpreted.

Kukumber3y ago

> bash is FAR slower than PowerShell, and it's interpreted.

That's not true at all

I have a demonstration that's very telling:

    time pwsh

    time bash

Post your result

It's sad that nowadays people do not understand the purpose of a shell

1 more reply

spacechild13y ago

I always use the Msys2 shell.

melony3y ago

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-bash

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse