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[outrovurt]

And am I losing anything by switching?

[seancorfield]

@outrovurt

And am I losing anything by switching?

I guess you’re losing a “lack of integration”?

[outrovurt]

@seancorfield

I guess you’re losing a “lack of integration”?

I finally got round to trying this out and I have to say the integration between Linux and Windows is amazing, and well worth checking out for this reason alone. For example, being able to launch Windows applications from the a Linux terminal and vice versa is a real joy, and something I never imagined possible.

However, there are actually a number of caveats people need to be aware of before attempting to go down this route, particularly if like me they have a VirtualBox setup:

1. systemd does not run on the version of Linux which runs in WSL2; if you are running a Linux distro which uses systemd to launch services and you have installed quite a few of them, you will need to migrate to starting/stopping them manually;
2. there is a small number of distros which are supported and which can be downloaded from the Windows Store (f.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, Kali etc.) If you are using another distro, you will have to find someone who has created a version for WSL2 and install that yourself.
3. the biggest caveat of all: you cannot run WSL2 and VirtualBox at the same time, at least not on Windows 10 Home edition. You may be able to do it on Windows 10 Pro. When you install the former, it disables something so the latter won’t be able to run. In case you do find yourself in this situation, you can switch back by running the following command in Windows cmd/powershell:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

(Setting this to off will allow you to run WSL2).

If you are running Windows 10 Pro, and are ok with caveats 1 and 2, it looks like WSL2 is a very attractive option. Otherwise you may have to stick with VirtualBox.