By the time you read this it might be April 1 in the Antipodes but, when I read TechCrunch last night, it wasn’t Fool’s Day anywhere round the globe. Apparently later this year it will be possible to use one of the most fundamental tools of the Linux environment (and most -nix heritage systems), the bash shell, natively in Microsoft Windows 10.

Previously you have been able to get a bash command line in Windows with tools like cygwin but, if this proves to be true and not a mistimed joke, this will be a significant step forward. Could it be true? Microsoft is certainly having to change and adapt. It no longer offers the one true operating system. On the consumer end, Apple systems are widespread and Linux has been desktop ready for years; on the server end there are plenty of Windows servers out there but I’m sure they aren’t a majority, particularly for the application of web hosting that I have been mainly involved in. Microsoft recently announced that it was making SQL Server available for Linux so this isn’t such an alien step as might first be assumed.

It might take a little longer for my long-held expectation of Microsoft Linux to finally appear but the company is definitely changing, responding to external pressures but, IMHO, becoming better for it.