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I still don't know what WSL is for.
To keep developers on the platform, because their own ecosystem is shit.
Honestly if it frees me from MinGW I would be happy
I'm happy the Cygwin and Mingw days are over. WSL2 works very well.
Windows Stolen Linux
Serious answer,
Windows subsystem for Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting.
Them tryna suck us back into their dysfunctional os, not gonna work on me Mr Micro
Oddly enoigh, they recognize this and are patching the hundreds of tiny holes. I would argue they began trying (IMO malformed) fixes back since the launch of windows 8 and .NET. It's backwards compatability means tiptoing around some pretty huge tech dept. (Windows was DOS and had no security model at one point) Each time they try to pull people off of their older SDKs. If and when they dont stick, the pile of stuff to support grows one more.
(Also WTH where they thinking with windows 8 apps!? The oversimplicity of the UI leading to huge patches of unused screen space, the art design or lack thereof, the janky unpolished UI elements. It's embarrising for how much pride they had for it.)
I do know what it is, I just don't know why you'd use it instead of proper linux, or a vm.
Bad management
Run Linux stuff on Windows.
A big use case is development with Docker containers.
Thanks - I can kind of see that, as docker on windows is majorly broken. I think I'd just run it in a linux vm, as I do with most of my developing, but I can see some might not want that overhead.
Consider dropping Windows instead
WSL these days is basically linux running on hyper-v tech natively in Windows.
I only use Windows because I have to work with a corporation's IT helpdesk staff to get on their VPN if I want to do contract work for them. They are not likely to help me get connected from Linux; they'll just find another contract dev. Once in, I do everything in Linux because my code will ultimately run in a Linux cloud container of some sort. WSL works well enough for me to do this. I'd rather have Linux on bare metal, but whatever. I'm in; I'm coding; I'm getting paid. I'll put up with a little bit of suck.
I love having it at work, so I can write and run bash scripts on my Windows work PC.
I have dozens if Linux servers available to me but sometimes it just is easier to run a script locally.
I too do that, working from a windows vm and writing code for linux - but I push it to a linux vm for testing. Never occurred to me to use WSL and have another environment to configure and maintain for dev that's different to the target one.
But fair play if that suits you! Each to their own, and I'm sure I do things that make no sense to others.
My company only allows us to use the company-provided Windows image, so I do all my work inside a WSL2 tmux session.
JetBrains IDEs and VSCode also have WSL connectors so it works acceptably well.
It also handily dodges all the Windows security policies (like installing software). You can even run Xorg apps from it.
I'm still forced to use MS Teams and Outlook, though..
Good answer. Like a michelin chef working at McDonald's and having a little secret area of his own.
yup!
Anecdote: I have an IDE that only works on Windows that can build applications for Linux. I use MinGW as part of the packaging process (AND I FUCKING HATE IT OH MY GOD. All of the pathing is broken!). As of yesterday I learned that WSL is a thing that might replace MinGW and make some processes of packaging for linux targets a little easier.
I've used both. What I can tell you is that moving to WSL is like moving to Linux wholesale. Treat it like porting your toolchain.
IIRC, MinGW tools will happily take windows style paths (e.g. "C:\Users~myuser\projects"). If your tooling/scripting depends on being able to use Windows style paths, you'll have to fix that first or you're going to have a really bad time. There may be other small differences between MinGW tools and what ships on Ubuntu (or whatever Linux you decide to use in the WSL).
its for when the reqs include azure ad and the whole office has a m$ fetish yet you still gotta get your bag without losing your decades-built toolset AND you have a choice at all
That sounds like hell.
edus and with the heavy m$ edu discounts attract and hold
I don't know what WSL is.