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 how to use the WSL export and import commands. These commands allow you to copy your distros to other machines, or to back up and restore your distros when you reinstall your machine. They also provide a way to clone your distros if you want to experiment or work in a copy of a distro without affecting the original.

You also saw how to build new distros using containers. This provides a productive way to set up new distros to work in or to quickly test applications without affecting your original distros. It can also be a great way to set up per-project distros if you have different technology stacks between projects and want to have some isolation between their dependencies. Being able to create these distros in a scripted way helps to boost productivity if you find yourself using this multi-distro approach.

As we progress with scripting the creation of these environments through the use of Dockerfiles, we move closer to working with...