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For those who want to run Linux without dual booting your machine or sharing resources by using a virtual machine, Windows Subsytem for Linux is the best option.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux lets us run Linux environments like popular command-line tools, utilities and applications inside windows. Windows Subsytem for Linux or (WLS) its a layer fo running Linux binary files natively on Windows 10 and its awesome. It provides a Linux-compatible kernel interface develop by Microsoft that then can run a GNU userland on top of it, like Ubuntu.

What can we do with WSL?

short answer: Bash on windows!

Having bash on Windows is a great tool for developers comming from a Linux/Unix enviroment that want/need to work with a Windows 10 machine.

Enable Feature

Before we install anything, we need to enable it.

  • Open Powershell as an admin and run
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

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  • Restart when propted.

Install Linux Distro

Open the Microsoft Store and choose Ubuntu distribution.. or something else Im not your boss..

  • From the distro’s page, select Get

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  • Once the download has completed, select lauch This will open a console window. Wait for installation to complete then you will be prompted to create your LINUX user account and password

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Update & Upgrade

After its done, type: sudo apt-get update

This It will download the package list from the repositories and updates them to gather information on the newest version of packages and its dependencies.

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After its done, type: sudo apt-get upgrade this will fetch new version of those updated packages in your machine

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References

  1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
  2. https://askubuntu.com/questions/222348/what-does-sudo-apt-get-update-do