[jbb555]

What exactly are people using the linux shell for? It's fun, but given that you can't easily access windows files and you can't use it to run things like the visual C++ compiler you can't easily use it to script windows programs.

What do people actually use it for?

[bitcrazed]

Bash <--> Windows interop arrived in build #14951: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/10/19/inte... allowing you to call Windows apps from within bash, and capture and process the output of Bash scripts and/or Linux tools from Windows.

What else can you use Bash for? Using apt-get to install your favorite dev tools, libraries, platforms and languages inc. node.js, Ruby, Python, gcc, go, Rust, htop, Apache, MySQL, Jekyll, etc., and then building and running your code with little/no change vs. running on Linux natively.

[KillerDiller]

You absolutely can access files from the Windows filesystems easily. The C: drive is mounted at /mnt/c by default. The ability to launch native Windows programs from within WSL is being delivered as part of the next update and is available on Insider builds now.

[NetStrikeForce]

I've been cross compiling OpenWRT for Mips in my WSL, which is very handy!