Windows 10 Console Host Enhancements

http://www.nivot.org/blog/post/2016/02/04/Windows-10-TH2-%28v1511%29-Console-Host-Enhancements

by blinkingled • 10 years ago

65 51 10 years ago

I really would want to use Windows Server, especially with the upcoming nano version, but it is a full 50% more expensive on Azure. A D4 instance (8 cores Haswell Xeon, 28GB ram. 400GB local SSD) costs $458 with Oracle Linux and $833!!! with Windows. It just does not make any sense for me to chose Windows.

At this point, I wonder why Microsoft even bothers innovating on Windows Server when it is going to get chosen only by orgs who need to run MSFT software or C#. Those guys don't care about nano or containers or whatever.

arethuza• 10 years ago

Or any other applications that only run on Windows - which in the enterprise world is a lot of applications, not just from Microsoft.

creshal3• 10 years ago

Still, forcing people to pay such a significant premium isn't exactly how you get people to use your product.

And I don't know about cloud pricing for Windows machines, but the price difference isn't nearly as crippling on regular VPS/physical hosting.

dan_b• 10 years ago

I was suprised to see how many Java applications run on Windows + MSSQL.

creshal3• 10 years ago

when it is going to get chosen only by orgs who need to run MSFT software or C#

And MSFT is positioning C# to run better on Linux too…

hvidgaard2• 10 years ago

Define "run better". They're enabling it, but I fail to see why it should run better.

zokier• 10 years ago

Those guys don't care about nano or containers or whatever

That's ridiculous. Just because someone picks a different tech stack does not mean that they do not care about the advantages that all that fancy new stuff gives.

pjc504• 10 years ago

Let's not forget all the craziness that is the "client access license": http://blogs.technet.com/b/volume-licensing/archive/2014/03/...

UK-AL4• 10 years ago

If you deploying a website, that's not an issue.

UK-AL4• 10 years ago

"Those guys don't care about nano or containers or whatever."

The biggest take up of containers is actually large companies.

pjmlp5• 10 years ago

For orgs that run on MSFT the subscriptions prices are actually quite good vs what they are paying for other enterprise software like Oracle,SAP and so on.

Also as an OS geek, I do happen to like Windows and see UNIX hegemony as killing OS research.

pjc504• 10 years ago

Windows isn't exactly known for OS innovation! A whole bunch of things were promised for Longhorn and then never delivered. Are you thinking of one of the many Microsoft Research projects that hasn't quite made it into use?

The sheer permanence of the Windows API makes it hard for Windows to innovate.

blinkingled• 10 years ago

As pjmlp mentioned below bigger orgs have better Microsoft licensing deals - volume licenses and such and smaller ones can apply for Bizspark or whatever to get lower prices.

But yeah your point still stands that they should simplify the licensing for people who are neither big org nor a small startup. Especially so in the wake of cloud and Linux.

dethswatch• 10 years ago

actually, really DO care about containers.

What I'm caring less and less about is MSFT. The feeling is mutual- they just really don't give a fuck about you if you're doing anything but using Azure though.

I'm finding that I need them less and less.

rbanffy• 10 years ago

By making Windows on Azure significantly more expensive than other technologies they create a negative incentive to develop new software to run on Windows. With time, this will hurt their own relevance. For this example, it's $375 per server that Windows development would need to be cheaper than nix. If development costs the same, a .nix-based solution would be able to use that $375 for a higher-capacity compute node.

mark-r3• 10 years ago

So great, they re-introduced the features they took out 20 years ago. Wake me up when they properly support UTF-8.

Too little, too late.

tonyedgecombe• 10 years ago

They didn't support VT-100, just a subset of ANSI.

loarabia• 10 years ago

I'm not sure what that statement means. Do you mean they only added ANSI colors and not VT100 sequences?

STRML• 10 years ago

Just use ConEmu (or get off Windows) if you need a terminal. It's still far more fully-featured than the Console Host will ever be.

The stagnation in cmd.exe (and even PowerShell) appears to be a casualty of Microsoft assuming that point-and-click would take over the world completely, which clearly hasn't happened in development. I still shake my head at the ops nightmare that is RDPing into hosted Windows Servers.

As one of the sibling posts here notes, there's really no reason to use Windows Server for anything, unless you have legacy applications to support. They're going to have to do a lot, lot more to make this a competitor.

sp332• 10 years ago

It's odd though that they lean so heavily on PowerShell now, and still don't have a good first-party terminal to run it in.

Ntrails• 10 years ago

I still shake my head at the ops nightmare that is RDPing into hosted Windows Servers.

Can you elaborate? I have all of my boxes saved in the MSFT RDP manager doodad (before which I used RoyalTS or seomthing). When I want to get on it I double click and it logs me in and there it is - a fully featured interface from which I can do whatever admin I need opening up the relevant tools etc using the point and click you dislike so much.

yuhong2• 10 years ago

Unlikely to happen, they went UTF-16 long ago.

mark-r3• 10 years ago

I realize the interface to the Windows API is UTF-16, but the program interface to the console (stdout) is not - it's based on 8 bit characters, generally code page 437. Converting from UTF-8 to UTF-16 is trivial, as long as you get the full byte sequence that makes up a character.

rasz_pl• 10 years ago

or when I can create nul.txt file.

ck2• 10 years ago

Bitvise has had a free ssh client that puts full terminal emulation into a cmd window for years. It's very well done.

But I don't like the cmd environment for ssh, unfortunately securecrt spoiled me but it is too expensive these days.

gpvos• 10 years ago

Excellent! I couldn't get ansicon to work on W8, so it's great to see ANSI is built in in W10.

Windows 10 Console Host Enhancements

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