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Thursday, April 15, 2021

Microsoft Windows Linux

Linux on Windows

It's 2021 and we've seen the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.. and now I discovered Windows Sub-system for Linux, yes, Windows support for Linux. Guess it took a global pandemic for Microsoft to get Linux run on Windows!

Well, it's not really Linux, and for purists, this is more of an emulation, kind of like docker, but for Windows. However it feels fast and almost native. Good enough to support most user-mode programming languages out there. The support started from Windows 10 version 20262, so to get started, install Windows 10 and keep upgrading until this version is reached.

Here's an official document from Microsoft that would help to guide: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 

There are caveats of course. All life is not rosy after installing WSL. I installed Kali Linux and that seems to be installable via the Microsoft Store! Most major distributions are present and more are on the way.

 

As you can see from the above screenshot, the support is really impressive!

One of the import issues with WSL is that the file-system is accessible via a remote share but applications don't play well with NIX-style symbolic links. However navigation works well and file-permissions are what you would expect coming from the other world. There are a few editors that work well with symbolic links, and you might have guessed it already, yes, it's Microsoft's own VSCode! If you're planning to use any of the Jetbrains' IDEs, the latest versions work well with WSL without dealing with symbolic links though.

Overall it's a real boost for a windows developer to be able to use both the Linux and Windows environments together.

Concerns? Comments? Leave them down here and I'll try and respond to them quickly!

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