txt :: MSH?

All those who love Linux and love using it at some point came to love the shell and its capabilities. Well apparently Microsoft is starting to realize the power of the shell... They just released a beta release of their Monad (microsoft shell) and from the looks of it, it's not that bad.

At first glance it wasn't anything different from the usual command prompt. So I tried the usual "help" command, but instead of listing the commands I got a prompt that I should try "help *" for listing of commands. The second command gave a different result from the old command prompt help command. Right off the bat I noticed the process commands and killed a few processes through the shell (: hehe.

One thing I was upset about, but not surprised, is that the commands were almost all different from what you're used to in Linux and of course very "Microsoftish" and by that I mean the names are pretty lame hehe. Now a new Linux user would argue the opposite probably stating that Linux shell commands are pretty bad. But Monad has aliasing so that shouldn't be a problem.

Anyways I should probably be a little more optimistic about this and say that whatever they have right now is still a humongous improvement on the good old command prompt.

Here's a very nice link with a 13 page tour of Monad that talks about some of the capabilities that it has. I was impressed with some of it and laughed at others. Check it out and see for yourselves (:

Monad

P.S. If you want to download the shell and try it you need to upgrade to .NET Framework 2.0 (which is still in beta). The official download of the shell is on Microsoft's website, but you have to register... and who wants to register with Microsoft? I mean seriously... hehe. The name of the file is "monad_b2_50215_x86.zip" so you can Google it instead and find alternative links for the download.

-bla