Hell freezes over: Microsoft and Ubuntu bring Linux's Bash shell to Windows 10
And no, it’s not running in a virtual machine or emulator. Microsoft partnered with Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, to build native Ubuntu Linux binaries directly into Windows 10 that allow Bash to run. And Microsoft’s already brought SQL Server and Visual Studio to Linux, and embraced Red Hat for Azure services—this commitment to open-source is starting to look pretty darn serious.
The blog of Microsoft employee Scott Hanselman provided more details about Bash integration than the brief demonstration onstage.
“This is a genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed, grep, vi, etc.,” he wrote. “It’s fast and it’s lightweight. The binaries are downloaded by you—using apt-get—just as on Linux, because it is Linux. You can apt-get and download other tools like Ruby, Redis, emacs, and on and on. This is brilliant for developers that use a diverse set of tools like me.”
Developers will be able to write .sh Bash scripts in Windows, and even use emacs to edit code.
Look for Windows 10’s newfound Bash integration to land with this summer’s free Windows 10 Anniversary Update. You’ll need to enable Windows 10’s Developer Mode and add the feature in order to use it. In the meantime, hit up Hanselman’s blog for more details.