Well that was a whole load of nothing.
Ubuntu in WSL comes with systemd enabled. Debian doesn’t, and you have to enable it yourself.
That’s why I chose to have people use Ubuntu in WSL, despite the other downsides. One less step to setup a Linux environment on Windows makes the process smoother.
That’s a fair enough reason. I personally never noticed because the “this isn’t running” message is pretty clear to me. But I can see how that’s a potential blocker for newer Linux users.
I use Arch in WSL BTW. This is not a joke its actually quite nice
How do you get systemd to work properly? Maybe because I tried to follow MS’s “use your own distro” instructions instead of using something prepackaged?
Surprisingly just setting the systemd flag in WSL settings worked, though for a long time I simply didn’t use systemd.
Maybe because I tried to follow MS’s “use your own distro” instructions instead of using something prepackaged?
Not op, and I don’t care about
systemd, but…When I’ve used anything I wanted to substantially modify, I’ve followed the “use your own distro” instructions. In the past I’ve done this because WSL had a strong assumption of exactly one copy of each distro, and I like to abuse it for more.
Overall, I’ve had a better time with the the “bring your own distro” instructions. But some of my experiences with WSL were before they even got the Windows Store installer working correctly.
More recently, I recall Windows Store being fine for stock Ubuntu and for stock Debian. But I didn’t find the “bring your own distro” instructions to be much trouble, either. My perhaps faulty memory is that it took maybe ten minutes, last time I used them.
ChatGPT - give me an example of what an insufferable Linux elitist would say about wsl.
“This article is not for Linux experts. If you are one and have a Windows machine (main reason is gaming), I hope you are using Debian for WSL and not Ubuntu.”
I use Alpine. It’s enough for what I need and it doesn’t take up 30G like my last Ubuntu subsystem.
“if you’re a Linux expert, this article isn’t for you. You’re probably already using Debian if you use WSL”
As a Linux expert - yep! My distro choice under WSL is Debian, for the same reasons shared in the article.
What reasons? They gave reasons? They just said that windows fixes the flaws Debian has which is quite the “compliment”.
I mean, I didn’t read terribly closely, because I already made my choice.
My reason is that the benefits of Ubuntu over Debian are most noticeable in the GUI, which WSL doesn’t contain.
In contrast, I find the benefits of Debian over Ubuntu to be most noticeable on the command line, which is all we get in WSL anyway.
To me this is some solid advice that I already knew.
I think there’s also a fair assumption by the author that anyone running WSL isn’t a total Linux newbie. I personally, think of WSL as an intermediate skill level way to run Linux, because WSL is still - frankly - a huge pain in the ass, when contrasted with trying out a bootable USB drive, and then only gives the command line, which is also a very limited way to experience Linux. (I think it will get better, but today WSL is not a way that I recommend to newbies to try out Linux.)
The main use of wsl is often for things like docker, not as a “Linux desktop”. Microsoft has been getting killed by Linux in server environments. This lets developers stay on windows and build containers.
Hurr durr Canonical bad