Longhorn Command Shell (MSH) Beta Signup

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Longorn Command Shell MSH is the new scripting and automation environment for Windows. This is a new Windows component that is planned for release with Windows codename Longhorn. This beta signup is for an early preview of the Longhorn Command Shell.

Key Features:

MSH – Microsoft Shell

Focused on Automation & scripting

Focused on power users and administrators

Provides:

Interactive shell

Cmdlets

Utilities

Scripting language

Remote scripting

Foundation for Task-Based management

You can apply for a beta test at www.betaplace.com. The Guest ID is mshPDC

View: Sign Up At BetaPlace

News source: Longhornblogs.com

Now that you have set the desired cabin altitude, simply turn on the bleed air and the cabin will begin to go to that alitude if you are higher than that. Twiddle the very lower-left knob with no label to get there faster or slower.Then climb above 12,500 or so and turn off the bleed air, or set a cabin altitude above 12,500... you will slowly black out! This is a serious occurence in the real airplane that you must avoid if you want to live. NOTE: You must be flying an airplane that HAS a pressurization differential in the SYSTEMS screen in Plane-Maker for this effect to occurr.
Otherwise, X-Plane assumes that the designer simply did not include the pressurization systems in the aircraft, adn the pressurization system is assumed to
be automated.

Trim speed is now controllable in Plane-Maker controls screen... enter the trim speed in ratio to default.

In Plane-Maker engine screen tab 3, set the exhaust ratio now... 1.0 for default, and more or less per plane to get the exhaust trails perfect for each particular craft!

New artificial stability option: Joystick simply sets pitch and roll. Easy!
Just move the stick to set the desired hovering attitude. Set up the constants in Plane-Maker Artificial Stability screen

#1 mcb on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:10

sounds like a powerful and useful addition, though security will be a big issue

(5 replies) #2 Mr. Static Void on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:14

Sounds like a rip-off of Unix.

#2.1 Avi on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:27

I guess that Linux invented the command line shell.... no.

#2.2 Wing on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:53

actually, UNIX DID.

#2.3 [saint dark] on 31 Oct 2003 - 06:20

so no OS can have a command line shell besides *nix, way to go!!! so all the car companies are ripping ford, they all should die

#2.4 warr on 31 Oct 2003 - 07:07

do windows still need command shell?

just let the dumb users click click.

#2.5 SomeDork on 31 Oct 2003 - 08:11

Asking that question puts you into the category you define.

The "dumb users" can click, but the power users can use the robust command line tools.

I wouldn't pick on click click users too much... after all it's Gnome and KDE interfaced with intelligent installers from Redhat, Mandrake and the like that are bringing in the (cough) masses to the unix platform from windows... certainly not the command line.

#3 acrophile on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:18

'bout damn time... windows has always lacked a decent CLI.

get a clue #2

(1 reply) #4 JnCoKiLLa on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:22

and this does what might i ask..

#4.1 Raptor on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:30

Think DOS and you'll have a vauge clue...

Basically a Command Shell is a very simplistic interface with the computer. Unix has various Shells (Bash, C, Korn) while Windows has only really had a limited command line interface. Imagine if you were to take away all the GFX and buttons from windows and wanted a interface in which you could still push all the "buttons" by typing commands, then you'd have a command line shell. If you're really versed in the shell commands, you can often due things faster than using Windows, especially if you want to script something.

-Raptor

(1 reply) #5 Avi on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:25

The only thing I personally need from Longhorn is being able to install any updates, files, drivers, and basically any piece of code- WITHOUT HAVING TO RESTART THE OS! That's IMOH, should be Microsoft's 1st priority!

Just my two cents.

#5.1 divertom15 on 02 Nov 2003 - 03:06

I think i would win the longest uptime award if that were so ( I DO turn my machine off hibernate doesnt reset the uptime so it keeps going while the machine is powered off ) so in essence you could say im cheating

#6 Goalie_CA on 31 Oct 2003 - 04:54

I'm glad they've taken initiative and created this shell but no doubt they'll have missed the entire point. I'm sure it will be complex and have lots of features. In actuality in unix, what's amazing is what you can do with a few simple tools like cat, ps, kill, less, etc. Another strong component of this is the fact that everything in unix is a file. I'm windows i know this is not the case so they'll have to do things differenttly, ie: add more programs to do what you need. As for the remote scripting, i guess it'll be implemented somewhat like ssh.

#7 ThunderRiver on 31 Oct 2003 - 05:00

Mm.. I am more curious about how it is different from Windows Scripting Engine

(3 replies) #8 kuroneko on 31 Oct 2003 - 05:11

So does this mean we'll be able to write and compile programs like C in windows? A little confused here.

#8.1 Xenomorph on 31 Oct 2003 - 05:15

it means you can make Shell scripts like you'd find in Linux .. (*.sh) ... it doesnt have anything to do with C or compiling stuff.

#8.2 kuroneko on 31 Oct 2003 - 05:43

Humor me here, but what are shell scripts?

#8.3 Jugalator on 31 Oct 2003 - 09:27

Similar to .bat files

(9 replies) #9 MR_Candyman on 31 Oct 2003 - 05:54

I find this funny because I know they don't understand WHY people use the command line interface in unix, ect. If they can't see why people use it, then I really doubt they'll make something ultimately useful for those people.

#9.1 pika515usa on 31 Oct 2003 - 06:22

How would you know that they don't understand why people use the command line? For god's sake, there are programmers in Microsoft, not just lame marketers with ideas that doesn't really work. If they don't understand it, then I don't even think they would have spent the time to even bother to program it, let alone start a beta program. Just my two cents.

#9.2 SomeDork on 31 Oct 2003 - 06:23

Actually, everything out of the box in windows server 2003 is configurable via the command line. And if you think it's not powerful, consider ADSI, WMI as the scripting technologies. It's like bashing um .. "bash" while using perl.. there's serious command line power in windows.

To turn this around, I find it funny that people using unix aren't willing to learn a new command line interface method that is just as powerful -- they'd rather just badtalk what they don't know.

#9.3 warr on 31 Oct 2003 - 07:10

learn shiet. that is to say.

windows is famous( or infamous

) of poor command shell. It is kinda of fun out of bill's head that now they put a shell back into the priority of windows. LOL

#9.4 JaggedFlame on 31 Oct 2003 - 07:32

QUOTE

windows is famous( or infamous ) of poor command shell.

Not really.

#9.5 werejag on 31 Oct 2003 - 07:52

can you explain jaggedflame how it hasnt been a poor command shell from the very start?

becuase if you look at the batch language and the way the shell has been its a very badly made unix shell clone.

#9.6 SomeDork on 31 Oct 2003 - 08:19

I don't think Windows has ever been extremely slouchy on command line tools since win2k... the problem has been the uniformity. There is a lot of power mixed up between the toolsets available, and comparable to anything bash/perl can come up with.

It's never been a clone, that's something you need to put behind you. The win cmd line interfaces were built upon function not copying. It's a thin shell (and that's where you get your "weak batch language" ), but the power is in the scripting available in the OS (which fundamentally is part of the shell... something that unix can't quite compare to). Again: WMIC, VBS, ASDI, WSH/CScript... all of those tools can do anything you want in Windows... and I do mean anything. All you gotta do is learn.

And if you think it's really been "infamous" you haven't looked at windows in the last 3 years, bub... or you don't know what you're talking about.

I think the function of this new shell is probably to consolidate some of those tools. It would be a Good Thing.

#9.7 Jugalator on 31 Oct 2003 - 09:30

First, what "batch language" are you talking about?

1. The Win9x "shell" that was basically MS-DOS 7.0. Also, IIRC, MS-DOS was based on PC/M. It's not really a Unix clone like how Linux is.

2. The Windows NT/2000/XP shell that is vastly improved compared to the Win9x variants and often as powerful as unix shells

3. WSH that can be coded in JScript or VBScript, often with a richer feature set than #2 above and better organized API

I'm also interested in how this MSH differs from WSH.

Last edited by 21023 on 31 Oct 2003 - 09:39

#9.8 daneel on 31 Oct 2003 - 13:51

I guess the biggest difference lies in the fact that MSH is compiled whereas WSH isn't and the native set of API. MSH should have access to the .NET framework whereas WSH mainly relies on COM objects.
At the end of the day both do the same thing but it seems to me that MSH is some kind of "object oriented" Unix Shell.

I gathered this from a blog entry :
$p = get/process FileName
$p[5].ToString()
foreach ($p) { $p.ToString() }

URL :
http://weblogs.asp.net/jnadal/posts/34413.aspx

#9.9 primortal on 31 Oct 2003 - 15:07

I read this also, did you note at the end of his blog that you can map a drive to the registry!

(2 replies) #10 Gary_Player on 31 Oct 2003 - 10:10

*Goes and signs up*

Beta software always scared me...but beta testing is kinda fun

#10.1 Jean-Claude Van Damme on 31 Oct 2003 - 14:17

You're aware that testing it requires you to write shell scripts? And commandlets in .NET?

#10.2 JaggedFlame on 31 Oct 2003 - 15:10

Gary_Player, with the kind of comments you've been posting recently, I doubt you even know what a command shell is.

#11 raid517 on 31 Oct 2003 - 15:23

Well it can't hurt, whether you want to deny it or not, the CL has always been criticised as the weak point in Windows - and justifiably so in my view. The only thing that conerns me is I don't know how keen I am to learn a whole new bag of tricks after living for 4 and a half years with the Linux/Unix CL. Hopefully it will be something Unix users can recognise and use too.

Q

#12 jh_newroom on 31 Oct 2003 - 16:00

I remember when all I had was faithfull old Dos 3.3 on My packard Bell 8080. Dos combined with a really good replacement for command.com called 4DOS was fantastic, and could do some really clever stuff(on a par with Bash!).

I still find most of my day is spent at the command prompt. I have noticed that as the GUI improves I do however spend less time there.

I appreciate the abaility to be able to automate stuff, and the command line is great for that, but a nice bit of VBs, or JScript, combined with a good GUI(i.e. explorer) tool, and most things can be acomplished.

#13 AJCrowley Esq on 31 Oct 2003 - 16:34

If it's anywhere near as good as 4NT, I'll be extremely happy. For those of you complaining about the limited capabilities of the Windows command prompt and batch scripting, check out 4NT - just anything you could want to script can be done, for example, I have a login shell script in a batch file that first checks to see if it can find the machine it's trying to map on the network, then checks the network drives to check that it's not already mapped, and if not, it does the mapping. If a drive is already mapped, but it can no longer be found on the network, the script removes the share. Just about anything that you can do in a lunix shell script can be done in 4NT, I can't reccommend it enough.

#14 raid517 on 31 Oct 2003 - 17:48

4NT is cool, but its still a 3RD party app. If it had ben default in Windows all along, much of the criticisms MS has encountered for its lapse in this area could have been avoided.

We shall see... The days of the CL are not gone yet...

Q

#15 corrosive23 on 01 Nov 2003 - 08:47

seriously though, often i can type out a command faster than i can go search for the executable and click it.

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