Why Microsoft open sourced PowerShell and ported it to Linux

• Embrace
• Extend
• Extinguish

It's been the Microsoft Business plan since practically the beginning.

If your os is windows and use ps, you can use ps on your linux vms as well. It prevents that you have to learn power and bourne. Such that it feels a bit more integrated. If you couldn't use ps, you had to use both shells which may lead to a migration to linux

"Why is everyone going to linux when we are shoving copilot into fucking notepad.exe??"

the fact that every small thing is its own cmdlet is super annoying. I can do everything in Linux if I know 10 commands

That sounds more like a clash of cultures than a real problem. In Linux you need to know 10 options and possibly subcommands for each command. Naturally the same concept has different flags, and the same flag has different meanings in different commands. Is that really better?

If I recall the Verb-Noun idea is supposed to make it clear what is happening, take a look through stuff like the approved verbs for defining cmdlets. There's aliases and stuff for sure for example I think ls is an aliases for Get-ChildItem in PowerShell.

It's supposed to make it so you don't necessarily need to look things up, need to do something to an item? Well you can Copy, Remove, Rename, Move etc, and while yeah that's a super basic example that you know the equivalent linux commands for, the concept is supposed to apply everywhere. Now, whether or not people follow the guidelines is probably another story.

I don't really hate shell scripting, feel like they all have their place, complex stuff though is nicer in straight PowerShell than bash IMO, but I'm fine using either.

Maybe you're a bit more used to the linux stuff then.

https://lemm.ee/comment/20786033 -- I think powershell's syntax is far better than bash's. It feels more modern.

Same here. I keep hearing that Powershell is so good, but I have to look up every little thing. It's all too specific and you can't remember it all.

As much as I hate windows powershell is actually decent.

Random question for everyone from a bit of a noob. When I'm using Powershell (PS) in windows I can start to type the name of a built in command or one I have added to PATH and then press tab to auto complete the command. That part works the same in my Linux terminal.

What I can also do after I have typed that command into PS is start to type a file name that exists in the directory that PS is working in and then press tab to auto complete or cycle through the files that match and it even formats the name of the file correctly (meaning if it has a space in the name it will wrap the name in quotes so that it is understood by the commands they are fed to). This auto completing of file names even works on files that were created after the PS window was opened. This functionality doesn't seem to exist by default in any distro I have used. Is it possible to do this in the Linux terminal?

Although I have done some distro hopping, most of them have ultimately been Ubuntu based. Currently running Kubuntu.

TIL. Looks like I will be installing Nushell. This is neat. Especially how everything returns the final value.

The idea with powershell isn't to be a text parser - so grep doesn't really work. When you pass things through pipes, it's a full object with multiple properties, and those you can filter with either simple expressions like select-object [-property] or with more complex expressions: https://4sysops.com/archives/add-a-calculated-property-with-select-object-in-powershell/

Select-String

It’s really useful too. You can either pipe in text or for example Get-ChildItem a directory of files and it will parse them all. As usual it returns a helpful object with properties like line number.

Its a completely different shell, not just another terminal emulator.

Its more readable, and its syntax is less arcane than bash.

For example, a script to get the first line of a file and its lenght in bash is:

#!/bin/bash


if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 filename"
    exit 1
fi

filename="$1"


if [ ! -r "$filename" ]; then
    echo "File '$filename' does not exist or is not readable."
    exit 1
fi


read -r first_line < "$filename"


echo "First line: $first_line"


length=${#first_line}

echo "Length of first line: $length"

There is so much I hate about this, like using a semicolon after the if condition, and ending it in fi.

Versus the powershell version:

param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
    [string]$FilePath
)


if (-not (Test-Path -Path $FilePath)) {
    Write-Error "File '$FilePath' does not exist."
    exit 1
}

try {
    
    $firstLine = Get-Content -Path $FilePath -TotalCount 1
}
catch {
    Write-Error "Could not read from file '$FilePath'."
    exit 1
}


Write-Output "First line: $firstLine"


$lineLength = $firstLine.Length
Write-Output "Length of first line: $lineLength"

It feels more modern.

I can maybe chime in since I've used both. Basic operations like if statements, arithmetic and loops are a lot closer to what you'd expect on PS. The barrier to programming in bash vs PS is IMO a bit higher because bash heavily uses symbols for everything. This does make PS way more verbose but more easy to wrap your head around it when unfamiliar with the syntax.

I prefer bash but for anything bigger than 5 lines I prefer proper scripting language like python or js and making an alias for "node path/to/js/script.js" and using execSync("program param1 param2") to run shell commands.

Long story short, I prefer bash because it's built in and I know it better than PS, I expect PS guys to feel the same way.