The Time for theWindows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is Nigh.
I have been an avid Windows user since the day of WinXP. I went from XP to XP service pack 3 to the forgettable Vista, the awesome Win7 to the okay win8, 8.1 to the amazing Win10, and now the incredible Win11.
Before learning to code, my PC was only built for games, from NFS to RPGs. There has never been a better gaming OS for your PC than Windows.
Fast forward a few years, and now I am starting to learn how to program. For a developer, Windows is okay. You need around 16GB RAM and an SSD for an OK developer experience. Anything less, and you can’t run docker alongside your VScode of about 20 extensions and a Chrome browser.
Here is where WSL — Windows’ Subsystem for Linux — comes in. The main problem this solves is that I can game and still develop on the same PC without dual booting or using Oracle’s VirtualBox. I like games, and I like to code. If you need to take a break from your code, you don’t have to find another machine to play some games to relax; you can now have both a Linux developer experience and a PC gamer experience.
Enter WSL.
I will show you how to enable WSL and install Ubuntu to start having fun as a coder. Docker on Linux doesn’t hog as much memory as Docker Desktop on Windows. Recommended machine: 8 GB RAM.
In this tutorial HERE, I show you how to enable WSL and configure it for Python development. Python, Git, MySQL.
