Bash shell via Git Bash or WSL in Windows

[fog37]

Hello,
I understand that, in Windows, there are two native shells which are the programs CMD and Powershell. An operating system has a kernel and a shell and CMD and Powershell are shell programs, i.e. programs to interact with the shell. These programs have their own similar but different language (the commands are not all the same). Both CMD and Powershell run inside the terminal, which is another program.

There are many text-based shell which are all command-line programs to interact with the shell of the operating system...Natively, Windows does not have the bash shell (which is instead available in Mac or Linux). However, it seem possible to have access to the bash shell if we either install WSL (Windows Subsystem Linux) or download Git, which automatically come with the Git bash....

My understanding is that Git bash allow us to use the bash shell in Windows, correct? Doe the Git bash run inside the same terminal as CMD and Powershell? I would think so...

How does the Git bash compare with WSL which also make the bash shell available to Windows user? WSL is not a Linux virtual machine but it apparently allows programs that are meant for Linux to run in Windows (same as Wine which Windows programs to run in Linux)?
For example, Docker expects Linux so to run Docker in Windows we need to install WSL...Or is it WSL2 (which is a actual Linux virtual machine) which is different from WSL1? Not sure what WSL1 really is if it is not an Linux emulator.

Thank you!

 

[andrewkirk]

On all the installations of GIT bash I have used, it is a stand-alone program. When you run it, it opens a dedicated terminal window into which you can type commends and see console output. It does not use either CMD or Powershell.

The GIT bash shell allows you to use most (not all) Unix Bash commands.

I have not used WSL but from your description it sounds like it does much more than GIT bash. I have not heard of people using GIT bash to run programs designed for Linux on a Windows machine.

Here is a picture of my GIT bash terminal window