Create a video about WSLWindows Subsystem for Linux and ask for help from Linus.
Create a video about WSLWindows Subsystem for Linux and ask for help from Linus.
I notice many people mention Cygwin and are confused about which operating system they should use. It seems Windows 10 offers a great feature called Windows Subsystem for Linux that everyone can access. I wonder why no one is sharing clear tutorials, especially since it works smoothly on Windows without needing virtualization or reboots.
I haven't tested for performance profiling. What I know is that if you're building a non-graphical program for Linux targets and your main OS is Windows, it works much better than emulation. You don't need to run an entire alternative OS—especially on a laptop—since you can just run the Linux application on top of Windows. This approach avoids the performance cost of launching a full VM.
In my workplace some tools use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It doesn’t make sense to rely on a virtual machine anymore for development. A VM restricts your access to resources like RAM, storage, and CPU, whereas WSL gives you full native-like capabilities. The only missing distro is Fedora/CentOS. Fedora was meant to be the first Linux distribution for WSL, but it got stuck with Red Hat Lawyers and hasn’t moved forward much, possibly due to lack of interest or financial reasons. CLion for Windows has been updated to support WSL, which is really promising.
The WSL restricts running an x-server, making GUI apps impractical. In newer Windows versions, you can still execute network stack tools such as ping.
You can set up an x-server on Windows. There are online guides to help you configure it, allowing you to use GUI Linux applications. Microsoft has been enhancing WSL across different versions of Windows 10.
The approach mainly involves setting up an SSH server and then linking via a client with X11 forwarding activated.
I rely heavily on WSL for my work and it offers significant advantages over virtual machines.