WINDOWS SUBSYSTEM FOR LINUX (WSL)
Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL)
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Contents
Command-Line
You can jump into the WSL by typing wsl
inside a Windows terminal:
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It will jump into the WSL and set the current working directory to the same directory as in Windows, e.g. if you were in C:\Users\username\
in Windows, when you type wsl
it will land you at /mnt/c/Users/username/
.
VS Code has an extension for WSL. It allows you write/run code inside WSL whilst editing in VS Code running in Windows (i.e. the same way VS Code supports remote development).
From inside WSL, if you type the command code .
, it will open at VS Code in Windows and setup a remote development session into WSL at the current working directory.
wsl --shutdown
Must be run from terminal with Administrator privileges:
wsl --upgrade
You can set the default distribution with:
wsl --set-default <distro-name>
The default distribution is the one which will load if you just type wsl
at the command-line in Windows.
Upgrading From WSL 1 To WSL 2
If you first enabled/installed WSL a long time ago, you might be running WSL 1. WSL 2 is a big upgrade over WSL 1 – WSL 1 used a “wrapper” to convert Linux system calls into Windows calls, whilst WSL 2 features a full Linux virtual machine (similar to VirtualBox).
Passing Through USB Devices
WSL 1 and 2 do not natively support USB pass-through like VirtualBox does. However, there is a popular 3rd party tool called usbipd-win which can do the job. There was a update to WSL 2 to allow usbipd-win to work without too much hassle.
Windows software for sharing locally connected USB devices to other machines, including Hyper-V guests and WSL 2. – usbipd-win.
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