A Look Back at the Microsoft Command Shell

Microsoft has not bothered with any development on any DOS or command shell since the days of MS DOS 6.2. Windows 3.1 was the last version of Windows that required booting into DOS first and then “booting” into Windows. Windows 95 made the leap to auto booting from startup automatically and thus began the decline of the dependence on DOS and the command shell in subsequent versions of Windows.

The transition from command line usage to fully graphical usage of X86 machines lined up with the demographics of the users of said machine. Windows NT, 2000, XP and the upcoming Vista all pretty much forgo the use of a shell to perform ANY action on or within Windows.

However, these later OS’ provided some simple scripting facilities to allow system administrators to control the behaviour of Windows as it was booting up. But the in-built command shell; which no longer performs the actions MS DOS once did, were very simple and crude. In the realm of alternatives OS’ Linux continues to rely on the command shell as the primary point of interaction with the OS while allowing functions to be performed through the GUI as well. This has lead to some pretty powerful shell programs like BASH, KSH, TCSH and others which very elaborate scripting mechanisms.

As more and more people begin to dual-boot both Windows and Linux to take advantage of the things that each of them does best, Microsoft has taken another look at their command shell for Windows. This leads to the Windows Monad Shell which brings back a good command set and of even more importance a firm scripting infrastructure. This shell is available for download currently in it’s Beta state, but before you go downloading it know that it also needs the latest .NET framework.

Check out a guided tour of this upcoming shell.

Cheers

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