A BIG win!

I doubt Microsoft will ever remove the terminal prompt (either cmd.exe or powershell), as too much of the core system still is dependent on it to function. There are still parts of Windows that you have to use the terminal to even run those commands. I doubt there is too many (if any) system administrators that would want the terminal to be removed. In the end, some actions are easier to run a simple script/command than going through several windows to do the same thing. A prime example, I'd even over, is imagine setting up new accounts for 20 new people with the correct permissions that they need.
 
However, this only backs up the claim that the group does favor the answer of fewest rejections and not necessarily the answer of fewest assumptions, Microsoft itself, does not appear to be behind the drive to obsolate the command line shell.
Yep, it was very lucky that Microsoft backtracked on removing the command prompt. Otherwise you wouldn't even have Powershell today.

Unfortunately SFU was not quite so lucky. There was an awkward period between the time it was deprecated with nothing to replace it for a few years. Microsoft then realizing that people do in fact use the terminal to do real work quickly got in contact with Canonical to find something to plug their regression.
 
My experience with Powershell vs CMD is basically wait 1 second for cmd or 5 seconds for powershell to load.

I always default to cmd because they are both crap. Might as well save 4 seconds of my life.
 
All I was trying to say is that when using windows as a sysadmin, you'll periodically get these trembling reports about how Microsoft is going to eliminate your tools and obsolate everything you know.

Most of the time these reports never pan out, but this is the life of a Windows sysadmin.

{One thing they did is incorporate posix commands into PowerShell as a way to alleviate these concerns. If they ever really did that Windows Sysadmins should be able to transfer to unix with a lower learning curve.}
 
All I was trying to say is that when using windows as a sysadmin, you'll periodically get these trembling reports about how Microsoft is going to eliminate your tools and obsolate everything you know.
Absolutely. If your vendor is only driven by money rather than technical correctness then you have to brace for this kind of impact. Personally I never thought they were going to drop clean maintainable service packs. But then they did.

I have never really tied myself down to their tools so their many planned obsolescences over the years matter very little to me. I think the biggest one I have seen is removal of MS Paint from the main OS ;).
 
This is perhaps even further off topic, I don't even remember what the original topic was anymore, but I wonder why Apple hasn't made further inroads into the institutional server market [as opposed to the home server market, which they do target].

They use a Unix OS, which originally was a server OS, but for some reason they never thought that that market would be lucrative for them.
 
They did have a server at one point, and dropped it, messing up everyone who was using it, of course. Then they put the server in as an option, possibly in Lion, but I don't remember. (I wish they'd stuck to cat names. Maybe we'd be having British short-hair tabby Apple 11.2). Going by vague memory, and only anecdotal at best. seems that only Mac enthusiasts were buying the server, probably overpriced hardware and most companies preferred cheaper hardware with Windows or Linux (or BSD, but Linux is far more widely used). So, with their strategy of charging a great deal for hardware that often locked you in, there probably wasn't a great market for it. I feel as if the place I worked last, (7-8 years ago) had one because we had a few Mac enthusiasts there, but I only vaguely remember an OSX server, and I think it was being taken out of service when I got there.

But back then, Apple were kind of the good guys. They used to donate meeting space at Apple stores for local BSD user groups. I'm sorry, my memory isn't great, I don't know how long that lasted, probably till Jobs heard about it. :)


The original topic, by the way, was FreeBSD being listed as 0% use, but at least getting listed. :) I don't know about the rest of the world, but often, it's quite difficult to find jobs using FreeBSD. Here in the Northeast US, it seems as if it's usually RH or RH clone Linux.
 
This is perhaps even further off topic, I don't even remember what the original topic was anymore, but I wonder why Apple hasn't made further inroads into the institutional server market [as opposed to the home server market, which they do target].

They use a Unix OS, which originally was a server OS, but for some reason they never thought that that market would be lucrative for them.
According to a friend of mine, the "server" part of the Apple ecosystem lacks the tools to set up common functionality that a server admin would want. Example: if you wanted to set up a file server, you would want to first set up a common directory with all users. This is possible, but Apple doesn't provide any easy tools to do it, and certainly not easily operated tools like Apple users would be accustomed to.
 
According to a friend of mine, the "server" part of the Apple ecosystem lacks the tools to set up common functionality that a server admin would want.
From what I have seen, macOS is basically butchered to make the OS more "user-friendly". For example it is almost impossible to get a chroot going. The command exists but there is no real way to populate a folder with a base system.

The (now obsolete) Xserve hardware is quite cool. I have an Xeon-flavoured 1u propped up against my work monitor and still use it as a workstation. Not too loud or screechy unlike many 1u's.

applexserve2009nehalem.jpg


Suffice to say, I don't run Mac OS X on it ;)
 
Frankly the most interesting part of that picture is 3% of unknown OS.
That's me, alone, manually rebooting a single ambiguous computer five hundred times daily, with the ultimate aim of pushing Google Chrome OS from second most popular, back down to third. Thank you, for your interest.

The original topic, by the way, was FreeBSD being listed as 0% use, but at least getting listed. :)
When I first saw the graphic posted to Reddit, I thought that someone was having a laugh. It took me a short while to understand that there was previously no listing for FreeBSD.


In Windows circle, there's a growing tendency for using WSL2 and PowerShell,
i.e. PowerShell 6 aka PowerShell core, not old ones. That's a good thing - IMO.
Where might I find a concise distinction? As close to ELI5 as possible.

I necessarily make occasional use of PowerShell and I guess that it's not core because I see advertisements for core at the command line.

Advertisements at the command line.

Microsoft never got rid of the cmd prompt, they only keep making threats, they've been doing this since WindowsNT came out.

They introduced PowerShell as a sort of replacement for cmd, but they still never got rid of it. Then they started making threats that they would get rid of both cmd and PowerShell, but they didn't do that either.

Now they have PowerShell Core, which is a sort of cross-platform opensource variant of PowerShell.

I always found PowerShell slightly circumspect, sort of like driving this big tank or 747, a vast array of knobs and switches, each one of utmost importance. The largest dawback, for me, had been that some of the commands require an entire phrase to be typed into the command line, which I would never remember [something like bash autocompletion would help them considerably].
I do remember thinking Oh, FFS when I discovered that some things that are intended for cmd are not usable in PowerShell. Or is my memory mistaken?

SFU was not quite so lucky.
Services for UNIX?

The (now obsolete) Xserve hardware is quite cool.
Very. What am I to do with the XServe RAID array that was removed from my previous place of work? :)
 
I necessarily make occasional use of PowerShell and I guess that it's not core because I see advertisements for core at the command line.
It's FreeBSD Forums, but PowerShell is on wiki.freebsd.org/WantedPorts -- Just for future reference:

powershell.exe 5.1
* Windows only (WMF)
* based on .Net / ISE
* Receives bugfix update.
* It's a component of the Windows (..\System32), thus they (Microsoft) never throw it away! -- with/without update.

pwsh(.exe) 7.1.2
* MIT licence
* Cross-platform (deb, pkg, msi)
* based on .Net core
* Receives all updates (bugfix, feature)

If you are not sure about edition/version:
Desktop or Core: $PSVersionTable.PSEdition
Version: $PSVersionTable
 
Absolutely. If your vendor is only driven by money rather than technical correctness then you have to brace for this kind of impact. Personally I never thought they were going to drop clean maintainable service packs. But then they did.

I have never really tied myself down to their tools so their many planned obsolescences over the years matter very little to me. I think the biggest one I have seen is removal of MS Paint from the main OS .;)
Which was just a pulling move in favor of Paint 3D. Pushing a new software or service is normalized for business. Users complained and brought it back, which is even more surprising.
If it's the biggest event you've seen then I don't care, there are alternatives, they have people drawing in Excel now. 🤦‍♂️
 
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