Book Image

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

By : Stuart Leeks
Book Image

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

By: Stuart Leeks

Overview of this book

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) allows you to run native Linux tools alongside traditional Windows applications. Whether you’re developing applications across multiple operating systems or looking to add more tools to your Windows environment, WSL offers endless possibilities. You’ll start by understanding what WSL is and learn how to install and configure WSL along with different Linux distros. Next, you'll learn techniques that allow you to work across both Windows and Linux environments. You’ll discover how to install and customize the new Windows Terminal. We'll also show you how to work with code in WSL using Visual Studio Code (VS Code). In addition to this, you’ll explore how to work with containers with Docker and Kubernetes, and how to containerize a development environment using VS Code. While Microsoft has announced support for GPU and GUI applications in an upcoming release of WSL, at the time of writing these features are either not available or only in early preview releases. This book focuses on the stable, released features of WSL and giving you a solid understanding of the amazing techniques that you can use with WSL today. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to configure WSL and Windows Terminal to suit your preferences, and productively use Visual Studio Code for developing applications with WSL.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction, Installation, and Configuration
5
Section 2:Windows and Linux – A Winning Combination
11
Section 3: Developing with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Summary

In this chapter, you've seen ways to work with multiple Windows Terminal profiles. First, you saw how to work with multiple tabs by controlling tab titles (and colors) to help keep track of the context for each tab. Then you saw how to work with panes to allow multiple (potentially different) profiles to run in the same tab. You may find that you prefer one way of working to the other or that you combine tabs and profiles. Either way, you also learned how to use the Windows Terminal command line to script the creation of both tabs and panes to allow you to easily and quickly create consistent, productive working environments for your projects.

The chapter ended by looking at how Windows Terminal profiles can be used for more than just running a shell by setting up a profile that launches SSH to connect to a remote machine. You then saw how to take that further and prompt you to pick from a list of machines to connect to, using a Bash script. If you regularly connect...