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

Enabling WSL

To set up your machine ready for running WSL, you need to ensure that you are on a version of Windows that supports it. Then you can enable the Windows features required to run WSL and install the Linux kernel ready for the installation of Linux distros. Finally, you will be able to install one or more Linux distros to run.

Let's get started by ensuring you are using an up-to-date version of Windows.

Checking for the required Windows version

To install WSL 2, you need to be running on a recent enough build of Windows 10. To check the version of Windows 10 you are running (and whether you need to update), press Windows Key + R and then type winver:

Figure 2.1 – The Windows version dialog showing the 2004 update

In this screenshot, you can see Version 2004 indicating that the system is running the 2004 release. After that, you can see the OS Build is 19041.208.

To run WSL 2, you need to be on version 1903 or higher with OS...