Windows Command Line

Windows Terminal, Console and Command Line, Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL, Windows Package Manager

Windows Command-Line: Backgrounder

This is the first of a series of posts in which we’ll explore all things command-line – from the origins of the command-line and the evolution of the terminal, to what we’re doing to overhaul and modernize the Windows Console & command-line in future Windows releases.

Windows Subsystem for Linux //Build 2018 Recap

Last week, the WSL team attended Microsoft //Build 2018. We had a great time meeting many of you and answering questions at the command line booth. In case you missed it, you can watch out session, Set up a Windows Dev Environment that Feels Like $HOME, online on Channel9. In this post, we will summarize the NEW announcement we made during //...

Open Sourcing a WSL Sample for Linux Distribution Maintainers and Sideloading Custom Linux Distributions

We are happy to announce that we have open sourced a WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) sample  for Linux distribution maintainers.  This sample allows distro maintainers to build WSL distro packages for the Microsoft Store and developers to create custom Linux distro packages for sideloading.  You can find the distro launcher repo on GitHub...

OpenSSH in Windows 10!

SSH is one of the most important tools in the *NIX world, through which users communicate with shells, applications, and services running on remote machines, devices, VM's and containers. Windows users most often remotely access Windows machines, devices, VM's and Containers via the amazingly powerful Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) which, as ...

Share Environment Vars between WSL and Windows

Hey WSL users—we have more features to share with you! Our latest Windows Insider build lets you share environment variables between WSL and Windows. Starting with Build 17063, let’s look at how you can leverage the new “WSLENV” to enhance environmental variable interop between Win32/WSL. Summary For the pros who’ve already heard ...

AF_UNIX comes to Windows

Introduction:  Beginning in Insider Build 17063, you’ll be able to use the unix socket (AF_UNIX) address family on Windows to communicate between Win32 processes. Unix sockets allow inter-process communication (IPC) between processes on the same machine.  Overview:  Support for the unix socket has existed both in BSD and Linux for the ...

A Guide to Invoking WSL

There are a variety of ways to invoke the Windows Subsystem for Linux from Windows commandlines and they all behave a little differently. Let’s get to the bottom of it.    “wsl” The first (and recommended!) method will start up your default distro. Additionally, it starts the distro in the current working directory where you invoke ...

WSL & Console team ch…ch…ch…chaaaaanges!

(image) Dear friends of WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux, nee "Bash on [Ubuntu on] Windows") & Windows Console: I would like to share with you some changes to our org' that will benefit WSL, Windows Console and the Windows command-line in general moving forward. After shipping a major new release, Microsoft often shuffles teams and ...