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WSL

Updated on
Last site update: 8 May 2024

Why?

Many of the better CLI tools, such as Babun, seem to be stopping development.

WSL has now reached version 2 that is far more performant than the first version. It generally gets good reviews from all around.

Linux and Windows

Note that Windows “does not know about” the Linux file system, but Linux can access all the files in Windows. By default Windows file system is mounted in Linux at /mnt/c/. I recommand to create a symlink (shortcut) of Documents and Downloads, the most used Windows folders, in Linux home directory. That way, the access to data is simplified. ubuntu-on-windows-wsl

1cd
2ln -s /mnt/c/Users/hebrardms/Documents Documents
3ln -s /mnt/c/Users/hebrardms/Downloads Downloads

(The above article also has info on installing zsh and Oh My Zsh).

Installing

You don’t download WSL, simply enable in Powershell, or turn on/off Windows programs, and restart Windows.

Enable both:

  1. Windows Subsystem for Linux
  2. Virtual machine platform

This is for WSL 2 which is a virtual version on Linux rather than a translation layer used by WSL 1. It it boots up much faster and is more optimized and recommended.

Linux versions

You need to download and install a version of Linux:

  • Ubuntu (680mbs)
  • Debian (80mbs)
  • Alpine (0.8mb)

Comparison

Debian is superior compared to Alpine Linux with regards to:

  • quantity and quality of supported software
  • the size and maturity of its development community
  • amount of testing everything gets
  • quality and quantity of documentation
  • present and future security of its build infrastructure
  • the size and maturity of its user community, number of people who know its ins and outs
  • compatibility with existing software (libc vs musl)

Alpine Linux’s advantages on the other hand:

  • it has a smaller filesystem footprint than stock Debian.
  • its slightly more memory efficient thanks to BusyBox and musl library

link

Ubuntu is bigger and comes with GUI that’s probably not needed. But it’s easier to set up than Debian. Also Ubuntu helped MS designing WSL so hopefully tightly integrated.

Final setting up..

After installing on the first run you may need to download and install any updates first. This is done like installing anything: download, double click…

The new OS will ask you to create a default UNIX user account: ie. a username and password.

Checking which version

Open Windows Powershell and type wsl -l -v to see which Linux version are installed with which WSL version. You can change the WSL version from here.

Using lsb_release -a gives info on LSB modules.

wsl --shutdown from Powershell will shut down Linux OS’s that are running.

wsl --set-default-version 2 to set the WSL version.

Do I need a new version of VS Code to run under Linux?

No. But you need a VS Code extension.

Choosing the install directory

Can be done with LxRunOffline

Adding ZSH

NB. This requires git to be installed on Linux.

Full instructions

  1. Choose, download and install a nerdfont in Windows.
  2. Update the repo: sudo apt update
  3. Download ZSH: sudo apt install zsh -y
  4. Install Oh My ZSH. sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
  5. “Do you want to change your default shell to zsh?” enter Yes.
  6. Install a custom theme: git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k

Help

Videos

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