Sudo for Windows (2024)

See sibling reply. The uid is what defines the user, the name is just a convenient alias.

But they all have the same UID, and are technically "the same user", even if you foolishly confer disparate usernames and passwords on them. When the system reverse-maps their UID it will display "root" because there is, ultimately, only one superuser on Unix.

The situation is the same for any userid and any groupid. If you try creating three ordinary users with a UID of 3005, they will be, essentially, the same user. There is no way at the system level to differentiate them, after they have authenticated. Because their files and processes are owned by the same UID.

This sharing of UIDs is generally discouraged and quite undesirable. It makes systems administration a real mess.

The historical and original meaning was superuser do and superuser is absolutely a thing in UNIX.

See here from the guy who invented it:

https://hackaday.com/2014/05/28/interview-inventing-the-unix...

and here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaAwl3HN5ds (from around 4:30 minutes... "do a superuser thing")

Also the "su" command originally stood for "superuser":

https://web.archive.org/web/20220317213155/https://www.bell-... (UNIX manual from 1971)

"su allows one to become the super—user, who has all sorts of marvelous powers"

If sudo stands for “superuser do”, and on Windows they call this user an “Administrator”. It stands to reason they should call it `audo`.

Though this would be confusing, as people would pronounce it like “adieu”, which would make it sound like an alias for `logoff`.

Or 'mudo', Microsoft sudo.

With the added benefit of having appropriate meaning in some slavic languages.

Browsers let me copy-paste curl commands from developer tools. These don’t work with windows «curl».

I know a few flags of curl too. These also don’t generally work with «curl».

Of course it doesn't help if a beginner doesn't understand why their curl command fails. I wrote this half in jest, because everytime PowerShell comes up, people like to Bash it for its stupid aliases on Windows. Yes these aliases are really stupid, but if you are using PS on Linux, it's not an issue and if you are on Windows, you just remove those aliases and continue living your life.

Some examples from this discussion:

> The curl alias in powershell is not compatible so it is an inconvenience.

> *nix fanboys were totes fine with wget and ls being an aliases in PowerShell for years but when they found out what PS is coming to Linux they made a biggest stink.

> Only the old powershell.exe builtin to Windows has these aliases and it’s worse today because curl.exe is builtin and the curl alias takes priority when you run just curl.

> It's wget for Windows all over again

> Ah yes, the 'curl' alias in powershell, vs the 'curl.exe' binary that uses the traditional options.

C# better than Java the language, yes.

CLR is better on the polyglot approach, although Microsoft nowadays behaves as if C means C# and not Common, and ironically JVM seems to have a more vivid guest languages ecosystem nowadays. Any of Scala, Clojure, Kotlin, Groovy, seem to enjoy more activity than F#, VB or C++/CLI.

There are plus on the JVM side that Microsoft will probably never care for.

- A single vendor implementation, Microsoft no longer cares about ECMA

- Following from being a single vendor, there aren't multiple GC, JIT and AOT approaches to chose from

- Some of those implementations explore having most of the stack bootstraped instead of still being based on C and C++.

- One of them being a compiler development framework, whereas Microsoft killed theirs (Project Phoenix)

- Others offer real time GC, and embedded deployments in high critical computing environments, although less than 20 years ago, there are still three main vendors in this area

- A mobile OS, after Microsoft botched theirs when it was around 10% market share in Europe already, and now they don't have a platform for younger generations

Note that Java, .NET and C++ are my main toolbox tools, thus it isn't hating one over the other.

I just don't like the verbosity of Powershell myself... For that matter, I've trended towards using TypeScript (via Deno) for my user scripts that need more than basic shell interactions. I can reference any repository modules directly, use a shebang in the top of the script with self/executable, and no install step.

For that matter, deno in a shebang for an extensionless file now detects as a TypeScript file properly in VS Code. win-win-win. While being portable with a relatively small executable surface (deon executable only).

> I think Powershell and .net coming to linux is very welcome

It was!

I specifically talk here about a subset of people who was very ignorant but became very angry because... well, they are probably still write it as M$ so there is no point continue.

Thanks, I'm with PS since v1.0.

> Only the old powershell.exe builtin to Windows

It's "Windows PowerShell" which would be forever v5.1 and "PowerShell" is v7+.

(we don't talk about "PowerShell Core")

> builtin and the curl alias takes priority when you run just curl

Yes, but again if somebody didn't bother to read the docs, read the output (it's very evident when you have some PS error vs. everything else - and people STILL don't bother to try to understand) and start bitching on the forums... see my previous comment.

And by the way: it was established quite early what the use of an aliases in the written code should be frowned upon, exactly for the reason what the aliases aren't stable and could be local. Aliases are the quick way when you are slapping something interactively in the CLI.

So wget/curl were added for the benefit of those *nix fanboys who needed something better than cmd.exe on Windows so they could start using PS faster and later adopt to a proper ways but instead of reading the docs they only rose the stink.

Mostly its related to filesystem and permissions. Interface between windows and Linux, and mismatch in how the two work.

Compute etc is fine!

Yep, running on Hyper-V.

WSL2 isn't exactly a distro. there's CBL-Mariner, which is a distro used for utility/plumbing, but it's pretty hidden internally. WSL2 is mostly:

1) a lightly-patched Linux kernel

2) a bunch of esoteric bridge stuff, namely:

2A) 9P for mounting the Windows filesystem on Linux and vice-versa,

2B) a Wayland server implemented via RDP(?!)

2C) Hyper-V NICs, dynamic memory and other VM integrations.

2D) even weirder esoterica like whatever magic lets CUDA work (and... directx? for reasons??)

but there's no canonical (pun intended) userspace. there are many Linux distros available; adapting a distro is usually pretty easy. for example, NixOS-WSL is lightweight and works quite well.

philosophically, WSL2 is a VM, but it's not an emulator, if that makes sense. there's a kind of convergence between OS and VM that's been going on for a decade and WSL2 has been riding that wave.

(disclaimer: I work for MS but not on Windows or WSL. I just think the arch is neat.)

Oh okay. That’s very specific to using setUID vs an alternative. Both have no real equivalent on windows to begin with.