There are plans afoot to move the Virtual Terminal on Linux to userspace instead of it being a kernel level application. But the main strength of the Virtual Terminal is that it is very reliable and you can always rely on it when your Xorg installation has crashed with an error. This is why we should keep the Virtual Terminal the way it is. On my netbook I use it all of the time when writing something or just listening to music with mocp. And if you are installing the Nvidia or ATI drivers it is sometimes necessary to use the VT to install them with the Xorg server shut down. I hope they reconsider this move, Linux has a perfectly fine VT and it does not need to change. If you are experiencing a kernel panic then you could press the magic SysRq key combination but there is not much else you can do about this. But the kernel must be configured to accept this key combination. If Linux is not broken in a certain area, then why the attempts to “fix” it which will only make it worse. Time to pay more attention to the other areas that need work like the new Wayland compositing server and creating a proper unified desktop environment that can replace Gnome Shell and Unity and provide a good user interface that will actually bring in users from Macintosh and Windows worlds and not drive them away.
That is one thing that would really help the open source Linux alternative take more of a hold on the desktop. I am eagerly awaiting the Pash Powershell alternative for Linux. I tried the Pash shell and it worked but is very incomplete. If there was a Powershell on Linux that works exactly the same as the Windows Powershell then all of the Windows professionals that trained on Powershell could transition to a Linux server and still have a familiar shell to use straight away without worrying about the syntax differences between shells. The Powershell can do everything that the Linux bash shell can do and better. I have criticised it in the past and I have been shown the error of my ways. So I will learn more about the Powershell and leave the discussion of its pros and cons to other bloggers. It is the future of computing; the evolution of the old MONAD shell that was planned for Windows. To be an overhaul of the crusty old CDM shell that still exists in Windows 8. That might be retired for good once Windows 9 comes out and the Powershell is well and truly established as the de-rigueur shell in all future Windows releases. There might be even more cmdlets in the next Windows release and this will extend the functionality of the Powershell even more. I like using Windows 8 Pro occasionally as the interface is actually very fast and sleek once you get used to using the Metro start screen. I am typing this in Chromium running on Linux Mint 14 but I now that I can always use Windows 8 whenever I feel like it.
Another good Powershell feature is the ability to output the results of a command or script to a Word document; this means that you can create a report about your hardware or installed software directly into a formatted document ready for printing. It would be cool if you could create a mail merge styled template and output to that to create a report with a nice template. I know that you just write the code to create the document though and it works perfectly. More features that Linux could benefit from too with Pash. I will eagerly try out this shell when it is more functional. Once it is packaged properly for Linux Mint then installing and running it will be much easier. I ran it by typing mono Pash.exe. It loaded; but hardly any cmdlets were functional. But a very promising project indeed.