Will MONAD be a separate bootable environment?

[Bearded Kirklander]

I was wondering if the new command line shell that Microsoft is developing, called MONAD, will be a separate bootable environment or if it will only run inside of the Windows environment as a sub-set?

Anyone know for sure?

I think it would be cool if you could boot to MONAD, do all your maintenance stuff, batch processes, backups, etc. and then boot into the GUI kinda like you do with Linux. Of course, that would mean full long-file name / NTFS support, I guess.

Thanks.

[Matt A. Tobin]

no clue on it but its too bad that it wont be included in vista

[Malisk]

Maybe it's easiest to explain this way:

msh.exe will be able to be used in place of cmd.exe

Assuming they keep the current name of the exe.

It has nothing to do with partitions, or even Windows versions.

The Monad command shell will be released for Windows XP, 2003, and Vista.

[Malisk]

For some reason Neowin refuse to modify my post above -- it just hangs.

I just wished to clarify that Windows XP/2003/Vista don't "run on" the command shell cmd.exe either -- cmd.exe is just emulating a DOS environment and just a regular tool like Notepad or whatever. It seems like there's some confusion about command shells here. :)

[andyandy]

You can download MSH/Monad and find out yourself :) download the WinFX Beta1 SDK (or maybe the runtime pack is enough?) from microsoft.com/download.

But to make it easier for you: Monad/MSH is a lot of things, but no separate operating system. Monad is a shell scripting language, a hosting environment and a command shell.

Scripting language can be compared to batch scripting in cmd.exe/DOS. But the syntax is different, in a very positive way :) One nice example is that MSH uses a global function named prompt as the prompt. So, if you write this:

function prompt {

$username = ${env:username}.ToLower()

$hostname = ${env:computername}.ToLower()

return "{0}@{1}: " -f $username, $hostname

}

you should get a prompt like "username@hostname: ". Since the prompt function is evaluated very often you can add a lot of stuff to it which you like to do often... checking for new e-mails or whatever and notifying you about such.

But I also wrote that Monad is a hosting environment. This means that YOU can write a program which hosts the Monad environment and can use it to calculate and execute stuff. For example instead of a command shell (see below) you could use Monad, in your own host, to use graphical symbols instead. For example to build and execute SQL queries graphical. Use your imagination here :)

And finally, it is a command shell. This is a quite simple Monad host, AFAIK currently named MSH, which gives you a command line environment. Notice that you can create your own eg. Avalon-based host instead to get a much better host then cmd.exe gives you...

AFAIK the only requirement for Monad is that .NET 2.0 is supported in the environment. If you can boot .NET 2.0 then you can use Monad too, but you might need to create your own host, since MSH is dependent on cmd.exe AFAIK :)

[Bearded Kirklander]

Thanks for the info.

So it does sound like MONAD is dependent upon Windows being loaded in full before it can be called upon to do its thing, is that correct?

[Angel Blue01]

For some reason Neowin refuse to modify my post above -- it just hangs.

I just wished to clarify that Windows XP/2003/Vista don't "run on" the command shell cmd.exe either -- cmd.exe is just emulating a DOS environment and just a regular tool like Notepad or whatever. It seems like there's some confusion about command shells here. :)

586339390[/snapback]

cmd is not emulating DOS. command.com (still there in XP) is.

[andyandy]

Thanks for the info.

So it does sound like MONAD is dependent upon Windows being loaded in full before it can be called upon to do its thing, is that correct?

586341698[/snapback]

Normally, yes. And I assume that is the only supported environment.

Haven't tested this, but if there is support for .NET v2 in WinPE then you should also be able to start Monad there.

[Commodore Max]

Monad will not be included in Vista, like pretty much all of the recent improvements ...

[Glowstick]

Yes ;_;

WinFS and... uh, yeah, and what else exactly? :rolleyes:

[ev0|]

The one serious flaw with monad is that it is heaven for those who would like greater flexibility in writing malicious script code. I think this is responsible for the lukewarm attitude MS seems to have taken towards monad, especially since it seems to have been kicked out of vista rather unceremoniously. I wonder what Jeff Parsons thinks ?