Has anyone played with Windows Subsystem for Linux?

[Duthomhas]

Having finally gotten my system running with Windows 10 64-bit I’m a pretty happy camper.

I like Fedora, and was going to simply reinstall a Fedora VM (with VirtualBox)...

But I have been looking at the WSL/Ubuntu.

Is it worth the switch?
What would/have you do/done?

[keskiverto]

I used to use MSYS for simple stuff (mostly ssh, svn), but moved on when the WSL/Ubuntu appeared. Still mainly for ssh.

[closed account DLw0Djzh]

Hello,

I would say the conversion would increase your productivity, however, having used ubuntu for nearly 3 years, you should manage just as well with windows, if you heed advantage of toolsets available on windows.

[Duthomhas]

Heh, I used to dual-boot, ages ago, but that was, indeed, a productivity killer.

The VM running Fedora (or whatever your favorite Linux flavor is) in “Seamless Mode” is, indeed, very nice — basically running two operating systems at the same time. (Though it should be called almost-seamless mode.)

@keskiverto
MSYS2 is a very nice, very complete setup, MinGW-w64 / Clang compilers, complete with Arch Linux’s very nice Pacman package manager.

I’ve got it and use it.

@Vilch
Yes, there’s nothing wrong with my Windows setup. I simply tend to write software that will work cross-platform; For that you need to test and debug on the target platform as well. Plus, it’s fun.


What I get is that y’all are saying WSL/Ubuntu is good enough to replace my Fedora VM?

[keskiverto]

Depends on your software.

If it has GUI, then the support might be lacking:
https://eising.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/howto-functional-ubuntu-desktop-on-windows-10-wsl/

The future "WSL 2" boasts other than GUI advances:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-is-now-available-in-windows-insiders/
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/05/ubuntu-support-windows-subsystem-linux-2


Personally, I still dual-boot too (and have VMs and containers).

[fiji885]

Yes. However, I did not like any of the Linux flavors that the Windows store had to offered. They're just not my cup of tea. I installed Arch Linux instead and could not get any Arch User Repository package manager to work. In the end, I just gave up. There are just some tools in the AUR that I need on Linux systems in order to do work productively... and unfortunately I'm too lazy to manually compile everything and install by myself. That's what package managers are for.

The only time I find myself using the WSL is when I don't have immediate access to my Linux laptop or when I'm doing something that does not require too much productivity.

[Duthomhas]

I will probably install as per the link keskiverto shared, just to play around with it.
But I think I will still do the VB+Fedora for my production.

Thanks all!