I have found my self a lot of time beeng mad at how unnecessarily complicated and unintuitive the powershell feels. Often I would miss the core utils, Screen / Byobu or even ssh for that matter.

A few days ago I came along a Blogpost by fefe where he mentiones the “Linux Subsystem for Windows”. http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a7172ae6

Lets give it a try.

 

What is it Windows Subsystem für Linux is Microsoft trying to implement a working Linux Shell in Windows.

How this is working on a technical level is described in the related Microsoft blogpost.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subsystem-for-linux-overview/

Installation The installation is quite easy.

Run (Windows + R): control /name Microsoft.WindowsUpdate

There you can activate the the developer mode. This can take a few minutes.

Afterwards you have to activate the windows feature “Windows-Subsystem for Linux (Beta)” and restart the Host.

After reboot you can start the bash.

On first startup a couple of files will be downloaded from the microsoft store and you have to set up a user for the shell. In this process there will be a few dialoges claiming that the procedure “Might take a few minutes”… if it appears to be stuck just hit Enter ;)

Finaly update und upgrade you packets and you are good to go. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

 

Tadaa, Bash on Windows:

There are limitations that I have run into already. I will play around with it a bit and make a separate Blogpost for that.

Cheers, Ori