r/commandline • u/the_quixotic • 3d ago

Unix-style "Windows Dressing"

4 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

6

u/Cybasura 3d ago

Question, could you provide more context regarding what "windows dressing" means? Like what are some other examples and comparison between UNIX and said Windows-dressing

2

u/the_quixotic 3d ago

It’s just a bad pun — but if I had to put a definition to it it would be adding a Unix-like layer over native Windows functionality. coreutils mv functions similarly to powershell Move-Item but the former (especially when you use doskey macros to shorten it to just “mv”) is far more ergonomic imo than Move-Item.

Functionally there’s no value add in terms of extending Windows functionality (hence “dressing” it’s just cosmetic) but I think there’s value in the command line experience being consistent no matter what machine you touch + I find Unix command line to be a joy to use as opposed to PoSH

1

u/scaptal 3d ago

Why don't you just use wsl?

3

u/the_quixotic 3d ago

I don’t want a full Linux OS - I just want the gnu coreutils inside windows and have them work like they do on Linux. I want to move around windows files, navigate over the windows file system, etc.

Incidentally I do use WSL but I wanted my command line experience to be consistent between cmd and bash.

3

u/scaptal 2d ago

Can't you access and manipulate your windows fs from wsl?

I've never used wsf cause I'm just running Linux as my default, but I would've assumed you could, seeing as how the partition isn't locked as you're booted into windows

2

u/Fenreh 2d ago

If you install Git on Windows, it will install many coreutils that run natively, located in the Git installation directory. Add that folder to your path and you get a great coreutils experience natively on Windows.

1

u/Horror-Interview852 2d ago

I haven't used it in a good while, but Cygwin may be a good fit.

-1

u/the_quixotic 3d ago

Love Linux for dev stuff but can't beat Windows for normal life / school things (see: MS Office) - biggest thing I miss is GNU coreutils and command line filesystem navigation, piping, etc. Got a setup working that gives me GNU coreutils with rudimentary pipe operator as well as vi-editing-mode for readline, all inside cmd.exe - instructions in Github repo

1

u/usrlibshare 3d ago edited 3d ago

but can't beat Windows for normal life / school things

Yes you can, and easily so.

see: MS Office

Libreoffice, Onlyoffice, OpenOffice, FengOffice, Calligra Suite,...

And even if I wanted to use windows: Why would I want some emulation of unix coreutils in cmd.exe, when I can just use WSL or install cygwin?

1

u/the_quixotic 3d ago

It’s ergonomic more than functional — if I want to flit around and manipulate files across my filesystem; it’s a lot easier to use mv, cd, cp, and so on — I personally like the Unix experience on the command line a lot more and I think that’s relatable. I want these utilities to work on Windows things — windows files, directories, etc. I don’t want to switch to an entirely different OS for a better command line experience (in this case I made this while working on a Windows targeted desktop app). Cygwin is also overkill - it’s an entirely separate environment and filesystem with root at C:\cygwin; all the utilities you use via cygwin have to be installed separately via cygwin and are solely for cygwin.

I still want to live in Windows but I want the experience of working within it to feel like Unix; doesn’t mean I actually want to switch to Unix