Enlarge / The Windows 10 S default wallpaper is a rather attractive simplified version of the Windows 10 default wallpaper. (credit: Microsoft)
While still not out yet, we’re learning a little more about what Windows 10 S, the imminent version of Windows 10 that’ll run Store apps but nothing more, will and won’t be able to do.
First, a thing 10 S won’t do: run command-line applications. CMD and PowerShell, the two built-in Windows command-line interfaces, won’t be supported. Neither will the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that allows the use of Linux software on Windows. The rationale is that the built-in command-line applications include dangerous tools (for example, the diskpart partitioning program) that can break things, and the Store has no third-party command-line tools at all. To keep Windows 10 S protected against user error, they’re all prohibited.
Oddly, at Microsoft’s Windows 10 S launch event, I was successfully able to run both CMD and PowerShell on a number of the Windows 10 S machines that were on display. Although the obvious ways of launching these things were removed (no entry in the Start menu or the Win-X menu, for example), the programs themselves did run. Leaked builds of Windows 10 S do appear to properly prevent their execution.
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