Talk:Shell (computing)

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The contents of Operating system shell was merged into Shell (computing) on May 31, 2014. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

Etymology

What would be really cool would be if someone found out why a Shell is called "shell". Does it have sth. to do with real ocean shells? I found nothing about that in the net yet.--Darkstar

Because it's a "shell" over the operating system. Dysprosia 20:40, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Its a nut annalogy. The shell of a nut is the bit you see. Inside is the kernel which is also the inside of a nut, the bit you eat. thomashauk 19:45, 18 Jun 2007 (UTC)

"Shell" does NOT have consistent meaning

"Shell" does not have consistent meaning across platforms therefore this article should be made much smaller. 104.228.101.152 (talk) 00:35, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to this article a "Shell" means either a command-line interface, a text-based user interface, or a graphical user interface. What a shell REALLY means is just the software wrapper around the operating system that you can initially interact with when booting up. So REDUCE THIS ARTICLE! Keep it simple, stupid. 104.228.101.152 (talk) 00:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Design and goals claims

The claims that "The design of a shell is guided by cognitive ergonomics and the goal is to achieve the best workflow" were introduced in 2014 but without citations to support them. As I remarked in my comment to my requests for citations, I don't think Thompson, Ritchie, Bourne or Joy were thinking about cognitive ergonomics and best workflow when they invented their shells. I think they were simply trying to create the thinnest possible layers between the user and operating system. Msnicki (talk) 12:10, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing on subshell ?

Or child process or Spawn (computing) ? —Jerome Potts (talk) 10:28, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DOS and MS-DOS

@Appsoft4 This section focuses on mainly one shell in specific, cites few sources, and generally doesn't present a neutral POV, so I have removed it. Feel free to rewrite the section or contest this TappyTurtle (talk • contribs) 03:00, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]