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Does anyone use it seriously? I guess I need better informational resources. I’m still wondering where the man pages are.

fleaaaa 5y ago
Been using since yhe beginning of wsl without major problems, while working on music production without dualbooting. I probably haven't boot up linux for about a year.. this strategy apparently works for many.
veesahni 5y ago
A number of years ago WSL completely replaced virtualbox and cygwin for me. WSL2 + VSCode w/ WSL plugin provide a fluid and fast experience if the code sits inside linux.
dboreham 5y ago
Google "install WSL2". Man pages come with Linux so they're where they always were.
iakov 5y ago
I use WSL daily on my desktop and laptop for work - full stack development and sysadmin/devops. Familiar CLI tools available right from my Windows desktop are a great thing. I’m really, really happy with WSL since I can use one powerful PC for work, music recording and occasional gaming.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Yeah, just like Linux but with added spyware!
  - iakov 5y ago
    Just like Linux but with a broader software catalogue, more stable drivers and updates. You can also disable telemetry quite easily, if thats what you mean by “spyware”. YMMV, of course.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      With wine/proton on Linux, not only do you get the old software thats no longer compatible with windows, but the new stuff too. And you dont have to play whack-a-mole with security settings against an increasingly hostile Microsoft.
smackeyacky 5y ago
Anyone using docker desktop on Windows has been using WSL. WSL2. I use debian as my WSL2 distribution, it's OK as a development environment enhancer in that it removes the need to learn Powershell to do anything productive with a CLI. It's not as good as running Debian directly. WSL2 was the motivation I used to switch to debian full time on my main development machine, so I'm not sure Microsoft can safely assume that having WSL2 means people won't dual boot or simply move on.
neves 5y ago
Yes. Best dev env that I used. Linux tools and Windows Gui. Problem os that eats too much memory.
__jem 5y ago
Yes, I find it a far superior dev setup than a standard corporate Mac. Everything about Windows is inferior to macOS, but I spend 90% of my time in a shell, and having my familiar Arch setup and tools vs crumbling macOS Unix is well worth the trade-off of minor annoyances like terrible start menu and file explorer. Windows Terminal is actually pretty okay.
tehbeard 5y ago
WSL for me: - Great scripting environment for a number of "used weekly/monthly" tools (stuff to test backups, automate some processes) Maybe this is more an indication of my lack of PowerShell knowledge to do the same. - Good way for me to test most Linux binaries our scripts / code might use (wkhtml2pdf seemed to experience this, might have been because any windows bins we found were out of date/mislabelled.) - Ansible "Controller/Host" , My god, my favourite usecase for WSL. It just works. Still have to deal with Ansibles bytespam errors, but you don't need a whole VM to just to update some servers.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
I use WSL all the time, have for years. It's excellent. I much prefer it to my last setup which was trying to MacOS act like a modern Unix. Not sure what you mean by "man pages". The full Linux man system is there, of course. WSL itself has very few commands of its own. There's wsl.exe but you almost never use it. It has no man page per se but it does have a good --help string as well as online docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/basic-commands https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/basic-commands
cloudking 5y ago
Yes it's great, I can spin up WSL to get a full Linux environment for web development, mimicking my production environments. I can use Windows IDEs to edit and browsers to test. Even tools like Browsersync work seamlessly running on Linux and syncing on Windows browsers. When I'm finished work, I can shut down the dev environment and play my favorite Windows games without having to dual boot :)
fortran77 5y ago
I'm building two things, in two separate WSL environments, for two different clients, right now on my Windows 11 Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop, as I'm looking at Hacker News. It works great.
awslattery 5y ago
I've used it without issues for years. I also used Crostini containerized environments on my Pixelbook until I just couldn't stand the terribly inefficient 7th gen Intel processor on it. At work, we support more than half the team on it. Company gave a stipend to build or BYOD, and a lot of folks opted for Win10 w/ WSL for gaming purposes (afaik, Wine didn't support anti-cheat in several titles until recently?) For me, being able to confidently use any non-Apple device, have full driver support for touchscreen/wifi/speakers/etc. and maintain containerized development environments, is extremely attractive.
kyriakos 5y ago
I use it professionally since wsl1. Wsl2 and docker play nice together, it just works. Pretty good for Web development.
GordonS 5y ago
Yes, me. Windows is by far my preferred desktop OS, but on the command line I greatly prefer Linux, bash etc. So I use graphical stuff in Windows (JetBrains Rider, VSCode, MS Office, Firefox etc), with all my dev files in WSL2. Works great, the vest of both worlds! Previously I was using Git Bash on Windows, which actually worked pretty well too (apart from occasional file system path issues), but WSL2 takes it to another level.

fleaaaa 5y ago

Been using since yhe beginning of wsl without major problems, while working on music production without dualbooting. I probably haven't boot up linux for about a year.. this strategy apparently works for many.

veesahni 5y ago

A number of years ago WSL completely replaced virtualbox and cygwin for me. WSL2 + VSCode w/ WSL plugin provide a fluid and fast experience if the code sits inside linux.

dboreham 5y ago

Google "install WSL2". Man pages come with Linux so they're where they always were.

iakov 5y ago

I use WSL daily on my desktop and laptop for work - full stack development and sysadmin/devops. Familiar CLI tools available right from my Windows desktop are a great thing. I’m really, really happy with WSL since I can use one powerful PC for work, music recording and occasional gaming.

fartcannon 5y ago
Yeah, just like Linux but with added spyware!
- iakov 5y ago
  Just like Linux but with a broader software catalogue, more stable drivers and updates. You can also disable telemetry quite easily, if thats what you mean by “spyware”. YMMV, of course.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    With wine/proton on Linux, not only do you get the old software thats no longer compatible with windows, but the new stuff too. And you dont have to play whack-a-mole with security settings against an increasingly hostile Microsoft.

smackeyacky 5y ago

Anyone using docker desktop on Windows has been using WSL. WSL2. I use debian as my WSL2 distribution, it's OK as a development environment enhancer in that it removes the need to learn Powershell to do anything productive with a CLI. It's not as good as running Debian directly. WSL2 was the motivation I used to switch to debian full time on my main development machine, so I'm not sure Microsoft can safely assume that having WSL2 means people won't dual boot or simply move on.

neves 5y ago

Yes. Best dev env that I used. Linux tools and Windows Gui. Problem os that eats too much memory.

__jem 5y ago

Yes, I find it a far superior dev setup than a standard corporate Mac. Everything about Windows is inferior to macOS, but I spend 90% of my time in a shell, and having my familiar Arch setup and tools vs crumbling macOS Unix is well worth the trade-off of minor annoyances like terrible start menu and file explorer. Windows Terminal is actually pretty okay.

tehbeard 5y ago

WSL for me: - Great scripting environment for a number of "used weekly/monthly" tools (stuff to test backups, automate some processes) Maybe this is more an indication of my lack of PowerShell knowledge to do the same. - Good way for me to test most Linux binaries our scripts / code might use (wkhtml2pdf seemed to experience this, might have been because any windows bins we found were out of date/mislabelled.) - Ansible "Controller/Host" , My god, my favourite usecase for WSL. It just works. Still have to deal with Ansibles bytespam errors, but you don't need a whole VM to just to update some servers.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

I use WSL all the time, have for years. It's excellent. I much prefer it to my last setup which was trying to MacOS act like a modern Unix. Not sure what you mean by "man pages". The full Linux man system is there, of course. WSL itself has very few commands of its own. There's wsl.exe but you almost never use it. It has no man page per se but it does have a good --help string as well as online docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/basic-commands https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/basic-commands

cloudking 5y ago

Yes it's great, I can spin up WSL to get a full Linux environment for web development, mimicking my production environments. I can use Windows IDEs to edit and browsers to test. Even tools like Browsersync work seamlessly running on Linux and syncing on Windows browsers. When I'm finished work, I can shut down the dev environment and play my favorite Windows games without having to dual boot :)

fortran77 5y ago

I'm building two things, in two separate WSL environments, for two different clients, right now on my Windows 11 Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop, as I'm looking at Hacker News. It works great.

awslattery 5y ago

I've used it without issues for years. I also used Crostini containerized environments on my Pixelbook until I just couldn't stand the terribly inefficient 7th gen Intel processor on it. At work, we support more than half the team on it. Company gave a stipend to build or BYOD, and a lot of folks opted for Win10 w/ WSL for gaming purposes (afaik, Wine didn't support anti-cheat in several titles until recently?) For me, being able to confidently use any non-Apple device, have full driver support for touchscreen/wifi/speakers/etc. and maintain containerized development environments, is extremely attractive.

kyriakos 5y ago

I use it professionally since wsl1. Wsl2 and docker play nice together, it just works. Pretty good for Web development.

GordonS 5y ago

Yes, me. Windows is by far my preferred desktop OS, but on the command line I greatly prefer Linux, bash etc. So I use graphical stuff in Windows (JetBrains Rider, VSCode, MS Office, Firefox etc), with all my dev files in WSL2. Works great, the vest of both worlds! Previously I was using Git Bash on Windows, which actually worked pretty well too (apart from occasional file system path issues), but WSL2 takes it to another level.