This is a very general question but I am having a difficult time finding clarification. My question is: do OS GUI's have a different shell than the command line interpreter? When I was reading about shells on the Wikipedia page it says below the Microsoft Windows section that "most OS shells in Microsoft windows are not command line interpreters". I understand that in the modern day most people use a GUI to interact with their OS and that if an OS has a GUI then the GUI serves as the operating system's primary shell.
So here is where my confusion comes in. On Windows 10, for example, you can access the command line interface and enter commands to the OS if you so choose. Does the command line interface on an OS with a GUI have the same shell as its respective GUI?
11 Answer
Some people of the Windows tradition use the term "shell" in a very broad sense to mean the user interface of the OS, whether it be graphical or command-line.
So in Windows, the GUI is the "shell".
Some of this goes back to an old MS-DOS semi-graphical (text-mode graphics) file manager app called "DOS Shell", that attempted to shield the user from having to use the actual DOS command prompt. So if this file manager app was a "shell" around DOS, then later Windows file managers and program managers and process managers and desktop environments and GUI systems were all also "shells" around the OS, presenting a more pleasant user interface.
In the Unix world, command-line interpreters are shells, and GUI/windowing/desktop environments are never considered shells of any sort. macOS terminology follows this model. The Finder is not a shell: bash is a shell.
Does the command line interface on an OS with a GUI have the same shell as its respective GUI?
I suppose in MS Windows terms, the command line interpreter is part of the shell, just like Windows Explorer and the Start Menu are parts of the shell. Just replace "shell" with "user interface" and you'll understand the way the term is used among some Windows academics. Is the command-line user interface part of the OS's user interface? Yes. Then it's part of the shell.
2
