Five fun things you can do with the Windows 10 Bash

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Anil Erduran

Anil Erduran is a principal consultant and subject matter expert for Hitachi Data Systems EMEA, based in London, UK. He is also a dual category Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Cloud and Datacenter Management and Microsoft Azure. Anil can be found on Twitter @anil_erduran.

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Telnet ^

Telnet is already installed on Bash. You can simply telnet to any endpoint you desire.

Telnet on Bash

If you have some time and would like to have some fun, try to telnet the following address [spoiler alert J]:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Easter Egg in Telnet

Play beep ^

With the commands echo -e 'a' and echo -en "\007", you can produce a beep from your Bash.

Beep code in Bash

If you put this code at the end of your commands, you will hear a "beep" each time your commands are executed.

Beep for each command execution

CMatrix ^

With the cmatrix package, you can have a "Matrix effect" on your terminal. Just install the package using this command:

sudo apt-get install cmatrix

Type “Cmatrix” to enter the Matrix.

Cmatrix on Bash

ASCII Animation ^

You might also like this this cool ASCII animation of the bb package:

Sudo apt-get install bb

ASCII animation with bb package

Another Easter egg for apt-get ^

In my previous post, I mentioned the Easter egg in VIM. There is another Easter egg in the apt-get command in which a cow does a “moo” for you.

Cow - Moo Easter Egg

Conclusion ^

It’s obvious that the Bash support on Windows 10 is a bridge between open source technology and the Windows ecosystem. We could all agree that this is just a starting point for Microsoft. It is just beta and there are several bugs and unsupported functions, but Redmond is working hard to collect all the feedback and improve the next version. Microsoft is also working with the community and customers to amend the Windows command-line tools and console. You can always use the UserVoice page to provide feedback to the team.