Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 is a new feature in the latest Windows Update.
Basically it is a way to run Linux Virtual Machines (VM) on top of a thin hypervisor. Compared to a normal VM, this approach is way faster.
It feels like inside Windows, you have Linux side by side.
At the moment, I only adopt it as my local development environment for office related works. They are mostly in PHP.
This way, I can still keep PHP away from Windows, and I can install multiple versions of PHP and MySql easily with docker.
I like the performance of WSL 2. I also love that VS Code with WSL - Remote plugin makes WSL integration seamless. However there are several things which I miss:
-
Git GUI client
I like TortoiseGit but my files are in the Linux file system so it isn't as fast and rather error prone. My current approach is just command line + VS Code. Once the Linux GUI support arrives to WSL 2, I will probably use other Git client. -
VirtualBox
One of my office tasks is maintenance task with the older Visual Studio 2013. I prefer not to slow down my PC, so I just use Windows VM. Unfortunately WSL2 requires Hyper-V component, and it will either make VirtualBox performance slower or unusable for older versions of Virtual Box.