Aug 23, 2016 Posted by newlife007 on Aug 23, 2016 in Linux, OSX, Powershell | 2 comments

Microsoft Releases PowerShell for Linux and OSX

Alright, I hear the comments now from the Linux guys, me included. PowerShell on Linux? Well yes, Microsoft has released PowerShell for Linux and OS X. It is available here https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell. Feeling a bit adventurous? Go ahead and download the Alpha and start playing.

Here are the Installation instructions as per Microsoft.

Currently supports Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, CentOS 7, and OS X 10.11.

Ubuntu 14.04

Download the latest Debian package from the releases page onto the Ubuntu machine. At current writing it is powershell_6.0.0-alpha.9-1ubuntu1.14.04.1_amd64.deb.

Open a terminal session:

$ sudo apt-get install libunwind8 libicu52
$ sudo dpkg -i powershell_6.0.0-alpha.9-1ubuntu1.14.04.1_amd64.deb

Ubuntu 16.04

Download the latest Debian package from the releases page onto the Ubuntu machine. At current writing it is powershell_6.0.0-alpha.9-1ubuntu1.16.04.1_amd64.deb.

Open a terminal session:

$ sudo apt-get install libunwind8 libicu55
$ sudo dpkg -i powershell_6.0.0-alpha.9-1ubuntu1.16.04.1_amd64.deb

CentOS 7

Download the latest RPM package from the releases page onto the CentOS machine. At current writing it is powershell_6.0.0-alpha.9-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm.

$ sudo yum install powershell-6.0.0_alpha.9-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm

This package should work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 too.
OS X 10.11

Download the PKG package from the releases page onto the OS X machine. At current writing it is powershell-6.0.0-alpha.9.pkg.

Double-click the file and follow the prompts, or install it from the terminal using the following command.

$ sudo installer -pkg powershell-6.0.0-alpha.9.pkg -target /

Here are the Path details according to Microsoft.

$PSHOME is /opt/microsoft/powershell/6.0.0-alpha.9/
User profiles will be read from ~/.config/powershell/profile.ps1
Default profiles will be read from $PSHOME/profile.ps1
User modules will be read from ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules
Shared modules will be read from /usr/local/share/powershell/Modules
Default modules will be read from $PSHOME/Modules
PSReadLine history will be recorded to ~/.local/share/powershell/PSReadLine/ConsoleHost_history.txt

The profiles respect PowerShell’s per-host configuration, so the default host-specific profiles exists at Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 in the same locations.

Note that because OS X is a derivation of BSD, instead of /opt, the prefix used is /usr/local. So replace /opt with /usr/local from the output above.

The real question is how does it look and what can you do? We’ll I took the chance and installed it on a CentOS 7 server. Here’s a bit on what we found.

Installation was simple following the steps.

To start it up type powershell.

Available modules are in the /opt/microsoft/powershell/6.0.0-alpha.9/Modules directory.

Run Get-Modules to list available Modules.

Find out what get commands are available by running the Get-Command.

Have fun exploring what is available!

 

2 Responses to “Microsoft Releases PowerShell for Linux and OSX”

1. Andrew Schwartzmeyer says:

   September 19, 2016 at 8:05 pm

   I noticed that you copied our installation instructions verbatim. Rather than doing this and so locking your instructions to a particular version, I’d recommend you instead link to the official instructions (https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell#get-powershell) so that your users can stay up-to-date.

   Reply
   • newlife007 says:

     September 19, 2016 at 9:02 pm

     I have changed the installations to not be verbatim, sorry about that, and I have added verbiage to check for latest releases and links to the releases page. I am a big fan of PowerShell and was a bit exited. Sorry about that.

     Reply

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