14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just come up with Windows 10 build 14316, which is one of the most important releases that are part of the Redstone branch, also known as the Anniversary Update.
This build brings a plethora of improvements, including the highly praised Ubuntu Bash, which can now be used on Windows 10 without any other tweaks.
Microsoft announced the integration of Bash in Windows 10 at Build 2016 last week, as a way to allow developers to work on its new operating system without installing any other third-party software.
Bash now runs natively on Windows 10, but Microsoft says that, in order to run it, you have to first activate developer mode. To do this, open Settings and go to Developer Mode > Update & security > For developers. Search for Windows Features and click the option that reads “Turn Windows features on or off” and look for the one that says “Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta).”
The next step is to install Bash, and to do this, open command prompt with administrator privileges by right-clicking the Start menu and typing “bash.”
The purpose of Bash on Windows 10
“You can now run Bash scripts, Linux command-line tools like sed, awk, grep, and you can even try Linux-first tools like Ruby, Git, Python, etc. directly on Windows. You can also access your Windows filesystem from within Bash allowing you to work on the same set of files using your preferred Windows tools or Linux command-line tools,” Microsoft explains.
What’s very important to note is that Bash is still in beta stage, so a number of bugs could still be experienced. Microsoft says that it has made this feature available so early in the development process based on user feedback and warns that “there will be gaps.”
Furthermore, the company emphasizes that this implementation is only supposed to be a developer toolset, and not a server platform to host websites or run server infrastructure. Obviously, Bash cannot work with Windows apps and tools, so in case you were thinking of replacing command prompt or PowerShell, you won’t be able to do that.
Bash is only available for fast ring users for the moment, but it will be released to everyone in the Anniversary Update coming this summer.