.png?width=100&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "Picture of John Savill")
.png?width=400&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "John Savill")
Sign up for the ITPro Today newsletter
Stay on top of the IT universe with commentary, news analysis, how-to's, and tips delivered to your inbox daily.
Enable Bash on Windows 10
Install and use Bash on Windows 10
John Savill
April 16, 2016
1 Min Read
Q. How do I enable Bash on Windows 10?
Dept - Windows 10
A. With build 14316 and above you can enable Bash in Windows 10 which provides the Bash shell running on a Ubuntu user-mode image via the new Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This enables Linux tools to be utilized in a Windows environment. Note that you cannot access Windows applications from the Bash shell, essentially the Bash instance is running in an Ubuntu user-mode space so it cannot interact with Windows applications. Note that the Linux Ubuntu is not running in a VM, rather isolated in user-mode space without requiring a Linux kernel and actually running on the Windows kernel via the Windows Subsystem for Linux that intercepts the various system calls (syscall) from the user-mode Ubuntu and translates them accordingly for the Windows kernel.
To enable Bash perform the following:
Select Start - Settings
Search for Windows Features and in the results click Turn Windows features on or off
Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux and click OK
The installation will require a reboot
Once the machine has rebooted open a command prompt and type bash to initiate the installation. This will take some time as the Ubuntu image must be downloaded from the Windows Store
Once installed you will be in the bash environment. The local filesystems are available under /mnt, e.g. /mnt/c/ for c:
Type exit to leave bash
A shortcut "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows" will also be added to Start.
Some interesting commands:
lsb_release -a : View information about the Linux
ls /proc : Virtual filesystem that displays information about the system
cat /proc/cpuinfo - View information about the processor
ls /mnt/c - View C: drive of the Windows OS
Other commands like vi, gcc, apt-get etc will all work
Note that tab completion works in the environment
About the Author
You May Also Like
.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
