Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday April 08 2019, @11:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the Powers-Hell? dept.

Microsoft Announces PowerShell 7

Microsoft has just announced PowerShell 7, a new major release that comes only a few days after the company originally introduced version 6.2

And while it naturally makes more sense for the company to roll out PowerShell 6.3 rather than a whole new version 7.0, the company explains in a blog post that it's all as part of the efforts to align the versions of all platforms.

Steve Lee, Principal Software Engineer Manager, PowerShell, explains that Microsoft noticed a growing usage pattern on Linux, but not on Windows.

"Windows usage has not been growing as significantly, surprising given that PowerShell was popularized on the Windows platform," Lee explains. [...] The next version of PowerShell will thus be available on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and the company explains it'll be available with LTS (Long Term Servicing) and non-LTS plans.

Also at ZDNet.

Previously: MS Releases Powershell SDC - to Manage Config for.... Linux
Powershell for Linux
Your wget (and curl) is Broken and Should DIE, GitHubbers Tell Microsoft


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:31AM (9 children)

    From TFS:

    "Windows usage has not been growing as significantly, surprising given that PowerShell was popularized on the Windows platform," Lee explains. [...] The next version of PowerShell will thus be available on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and the company explains it'll be available with LTS (Long Term Servicing) and non-LTS plans.

    It's not surprising at all. Many folks, especially those in corporate IT are moving many of their servers to Linux. At the same time, many of those folks have libraries of Powershell scripts they use for management, monitoring and maintenence.

    That they should want to use those tools on their Linux boxes, rather than re-implementing their tools in sh, perl, python or other, is perfectly reasonable.

    Years ago, I went the other way myself. I had tools written in sh, perl, etc. and was incredibly happy when I could use those tools *unmodified* on Windows boxes via Cygwin [cygwin.com].

    Surprising? Not even a little bit.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:29AM (8 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:29AM (#826485) Journal

    > Powershell on Linux

    No. Not only no, but fuck no. Microsoft is a creeping cancer, a gelatinous mass whose only instinct is to consume and turn everything it touches into shit.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:42AM (6 children)

      > Powershell on Linux

      No. Not only no, but fuck no. Microsoft is a creeping cancer, a gelatinous mass whose only instinct is to consume and turn everything it touches into shit.

      I wouldn't do so. But that's because my tools are all written in languages supported by Linux. Others, especially corporate IT groups that have been using Microsoft for 30 years, likely have tools written in Powershell, given that it's head and shoulders above anything else provided by Microsoft for scripting.

      Should we discourage such people from moving at least some of their infrastructure to Linux by forcing them to re-implement all their tools in a new language?

      Even if you despise Microsoft, it should be obvious that Powershell on Linux is a win for Linux, not Microsoft. If their corporate customers weren't *demanding* this, Microsoft would never allow their tools to run on Linux -- that jeopardizes their OS sales.

      What's more, as folks who have only done Windows see how much better things are over on the other side, Microsoft will suffer more, not less.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:55AM (2 children)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:55AM (#826503) Journal

        That idea surely must have occurred to the skinwalkers at MS, and they took the gamble anyway. They're evil, not stupid...so unless their egos are getting in the way and they're truly blind, I can only assume they have good reason to believe things won't turn out that way.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @03:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @03:21AM (#826533)

          That idea surely must have occurred to the skinwalkers at MS, and they took the gamble anyway. They're evil, not stupid...so unless their egos are getting in the way and they're truly blind, I can only assume they have good reason to believe things won't turn out that way.

          Having worked for Microsoft for several years back at the turn of the century, I can tell you that most MS people are not evil. Greedy, definitely. Shortsighted, most certainly. And there are those who are sociopathic, many of whom have risen through the ranks for just that reason.

          In this case, customers really didn't give them much choice. Just as it's been in their cloud business. Do you really think they'd provide Linux as part of their PaaS offerings if they could helpit? Paying customers, especially the big ones, can get vendors like Microsoft to do all sorts of things that hurts their long-term, because they're focused on meeting their quarterly sales goals. This distorts decision making and often causes folks to act stupidly.

          I suggest applying Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] more liberally.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @07:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @07:02PM (#827573)

          they don't have a choice, obviously.

      • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:36AM (2 children)

        by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:36AM (#826619) Journal

        Should we discourage such people from moving at least some of their infrastructure to Linux by forcing them to re-implement all their tools in a new language?

        Except it does not work that way. Remember Mono? The same argument was trotted out for that turd. In a matter of years it was shown that it pulled the other way, causing a small but definite move away from GNU/Linux to Windows development.

        Powershell is not even half-baked. It's just there to keep them from running real tools and to burn through staff time and managment budgets. Letting people use it on GNULinux, FreeBSD, or whatever else will only leave a bad experience with the new systems, slow down the migration, and cause the managers to give up and move back to the perceived comfort of the familar.

        --
        Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:06AM (1 child)

          Powershell is not even half-baked. It's just there to keep them from running real tools and to burn through staff time and managment budgets. Letting people use it on GNULinux, FreeBSD, or whatever else will only leave a bad experience with the new systems, slow down the migration, and cause the managers to give up and move back to the perceived comfort of the familar.

          I hear what you're saying about Mono, and it's a valid point. Those who wanted to write code that could run under .Net on Windows and Mono on *nix likely would get frustrated with the issues around Mono and go (back) to Windows.

          However, Powershell is not a language or a development framework. It's a tool that's less functional than bash and isn't suited to real software development. That's not surprising, as it was introduced and developed as a scripting tool to manage Windows systems, not as a programming language.

          Powershell is actually pretty "mature" (in terms of age) on the Windows platform (it was first released in 2006). It was little used until Microsoft started adding libraries of cmdlets (functions that performed specific tasks) for managing Windows servers and Active Directory.

          Usage did grow in the Windows space, as there were damn few decent scriptable automation tools for AD and Windows system management.

          The functionality of Powershell hasn't progressed much further than that, and, given the vastly better tools for management and administration provided by *nix environments, the only folks who would be interested in using it on *nix are folks who come from the Windows space and have libraries of Powershell tools they wish to use across all their systems. Which, in a Windows-centric environment makes a lot of sense.

          As such, it seems really unlikely that someone just coming to Linux or BSD would take the time to download, build and install Powershell to use over the tools already provided on the platform, unless they already had experience (and tools already written in Powershell) with Powershell.

          And if anyone did any searching around for *nix scripting tools, Powershell probably would be relegated to the seventh or eighth page of search results, if not even deeper.

          As such, I think your analogy to Mono is flawed. But it doesn't much matter what you or I think, and we'll see what happens (or doesn't) with Powershell on *nix. Perhaps you're right.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:24AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @11:24AM (#827839)

            take the time to download, build and install Powershell to use over the tools already provided on the platform

            PowerShell has a snap package.

            sudo snap install powershell

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:47PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:47PM (#826782) Journal

      and turn everything it touches into shit.

      You could simply call it The Microsoft Touch to use less harsh language.

      It's sort of like The Midas Touch but for Microsoft.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.