In this course we will become familiar with the Unix command line. macOS includes a Terminal app and many Unix utilities by default, but Windows does not. By installing Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) you can run a full Linux environment on your Windows machine without dual-booting or using another computer. WSL2 is tightly integrated with Windows and lets you install popular distributions such as Ubuntu.
This is thanks to the introduction of Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) by Microsoft. It allows you to install various Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu. It is tightly integrated into Windows. For example, it can access files in your Windows file system.
Starting on WSL2¶
There is no place better than the official channel for the installation instructions. Here is the full Microsoft documentation on how to create a WSL2 development environment in Windows. We will stick with the default, that is, typing in PowerShell:
wsl --installWe will keep following the above guide. We will
It is recommended that you use Windows Terminal, a useful terminal that hosts the WSL2 command-line shells. You can customize how your terminal looks! We will use the section on
WSL2 can access your Windows files, and you can access your WSL2 files from Windows File Explorer. This is described in the section on
We will end here. We will go further into the documentation about code editors and Git when we learn those.