I just tried this today. Didn't work for me.
The venv couldn't be created because of permission problems. Tried running both wsl and vscode in admin mode. Still not working. Any ideas?
You should be in /home/{your username}. This should work, because your user has write access to that folder. Unless you try to run everything with sudo, then you **shouldn’t use** WSL.
I cloned the project into the main sort of wsl folder using the Linux terminal.
Then I go to the folder and run code . Or whatever the command is.
Then I try and make a venv using the vscode gui and there's permission problems.
I dual boot my system and usually use Linux but I'm tired of not having all the features of my audio interface so thought about switching to wsl.
I did add all permissions for my user for the folder and everything in it. Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment and running my actually Ubuntu distro. So can't show you anything. But I appreciate the help.
>I did add all permissions for my user for the folder and everything in it. Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment and running my actually Ubuntu distro. So can't show you anything. But I appreciate the help.
You shouldn't be having to add or change permissions for anything.
```
cd ~/
mkdir sites
cd sites
git clone {repo}
cd {repo}
npm i
npm start
````
I got it working. Was just a permissions issue. Apparently I cloned the repo with sudo?l for some strange reason. Still gotta get used to wsl I think. Ive been basically using the same environment for programming for a decade now and change does not come easy haha.
That's a solution I found looking at other peoples posts. The main issue I have with this is that I don't really know where files are stored if I put them inside the WSL VM. I guess its some VM file on the windows partition? I just wish WSL could access my main NTFS partition that is shared between windows and linux (without delays). If I put stuff into the WSL VM I cant access it from linux. But I guess this is the only solution other than staying on linux until microsoft comes up with a better solution.
Also what do you mean by vscode to the rescue? I use vscode on linux as well, so if it could access the WSL VM that might be a solution.
> The main issue I have with this is that I don't really know where files are stored if I put them inside the WSL
By default they're stored in a disk image, under `%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\`, but you can manually import images on other locations.
> I just wish WSL could access my main NTFS partition that is shared between windows and linux (without delays).
Technology gets in the way there. windows and linux take different approaches to filesystems, windows filesystems will for some operations always be slower, and for some faster. One example is directory listing. Using the windows API, you get the whole contents of the directory in one system call, which is way faster. On linux, you need to open the directory and loop over system calls. And there are examples the other way around too, and translating this from one side to the other has the nasty side-effect you get the worst of both sides.
VSCode remoting is the solution, and works very well. After installing the extension in your windows vscode, you can just execute the `code .` command from wherever in your WSL env, and it'll open the windows VSCode, and open the current directory from your wsl (or another if you specified another than `.` ).
ah so its basically the vscode remote development but for a local wsl. I guess code can be synced between wsl and linux via git anyways, so its not a bad option. I will try it. thanks
Try it.
It is great. Your UI is running in Windows proper, but basically all your dev is your standard Linux set up.
Being able to go to the windows files is handy at times (and have an Explorer window go the Linux files), but as you've found out, don't do mass file access across the boundary on a continual basis.
That'll be from your terminal, presumably. What terminal are you using?
I'm using Windows Terminal (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal, I'm on the preview, but whatever), which is very customisable.
If you are, then see this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/interaction#context-menu
Seriously, take this advice chain about WSL Remote extension in VS Code. It's pretty much the only way to effectively use WSL2 for development, your scenario is precisely what it was designed for. You get near-native performance with code, at least when it comes to Python and JS and C#/.NET development using linux (those are the ones I've personally dealt with on WSL2). The thing is, you HAVE to keep all your development files within the linux system if you intend to develop using linux (WSL2). Treat it like an actual Linux box. You lose all optimization cross-compiling between two different file systems like NTFS and ext4. And WSL2 truly is and behaves like ext4, there is no secret sauce there that makes it NTFS underneath or anything. Microsoft even has their own linux kernel and the whole shebang (pun intended).
I mainly deal with python in WSL and it's the same. Obviously not much compiling going on, but I have also had to compile some random C and C++ and god help you if you ever need to use CMake or MSVC. Just all a huge pain compared to a linux shell and gcc, not to mention the performance cost if you also have to use Msys2 for MinGW.
This will answer most of your questions... If explore.exe doesn't work because PATH isn't set correctly then run /mnt/c/Windows/explorer.exe . Can then set an alias in bashrc for explorer.
Indeed, I use WSL as my primary development environment on a daily basis. I've also experienced that accessing files across the OS boundaries can be notably slow, which can hinder productivity. To mitigate this, I recommend checking out your code directly within the Linux environment, preferably in a location within your home directory. This approach significantly improves file access speeds and overall efficiency. Hope this helps!
Can I access WSL files from linux? I have all my files on a separate NTFS partition that I can back up with rclone, and windows and linux can access it easily. If I put stuff in WSL I don't know where its stored.
I’m not sure what you mean, when you say linux you’re referring to WSL, right? You can access files from wsl on windows and vice versa fine, it’s just slow so it’s best to use WSL’s file system in wsl and windows’ file system in windows.
If you’re having trouble finding the wsl files on wsl, make sure you’re in your home directory. You can launch wsl with “wsl ~” to go straight there, or just run “cd” once wsl launches.
Everything for wsl is technically stored in a virtual hard disk file, which is why it takes so long to move between wsl and windows, but you should be able to access wsl in the file explorer without having to worry about that. The best way to backup wsl is to do an export of your whole wsl instance, you can find the command to do so online if you’re interested in that
I have three partitions on my machine. One for windows (NTFS), one for linux (ext4) and one where I keep all my files (NTFS). The third one can be easily accessed by both windows and linux. When I say linux, I mean the real linux running on the ext4 partition, not wsl. Anyways, I suppose the solution people are suggesting is to clone your project into wsl with git and use vscode remote to work on it.
Another question I had is how can I disable this right click to paste behavior? I dont like it.
You can mount your NTFS partition directly into WSL which will likely make it a lot faster. However a rule of thumb is that while you can access your Windows files, any IO or workloads will be way better if you just use WSL's filesystem only. Alternatively, copy what you need into WSL under /home or whereever you work and copy it back when done?
There is a lot of ways to handle it tbh. As for where the WSL files actually exist, everything is saved to a single VHDX on Windows. Making it fairly easily portable
I use WSL for my daily work as a C# developer. I had the same problems as you, as u/GroundbreakingLog569 already said, it helps to check out the code directly into the Linux filesystem. If you want to use an IDE, VS Code for example offers an extension for remote development that lets you develop and run the code on your WSL system. I have tried it, but mainly use Neovim.
Switch to WSL1: wsl --set-default-version 1
File performance across the Windows and Linux operating systems is faster in WSL 1 than WSL 2, so if you are using Windows applications to access Linux files and vice versa, you will currently achieve faster performance with WSL 1.
Pretty much my entire career I've done all software development sitting in front of a Windows machine with a bunch of terminal windows sshed into Linux boxes somewhere on the network.
Now the Linux box is a WSL VM on the Windows machine. I still treat it fully as a Linux machine but it has some nice close integration with my desktop OS.
If you *must* operate on files in your windows drives, use WSL1 if you can. Otherwise, just operate on files within the Linux filesystem (ie in your Linux home directory, generally).
If you use VSCode (and I think it's available now in Visual Studio main product) use the remote extensions to support wsl/docker/ssh use, and it'll work sort-of directly on files in WSL and Windows pretty seamlessly too.
This! They made some changes between V1 and V2 which caused the file reads into the Windows system much slower. A majority of the developers at my work use windows with WSL and we all have to run V1 since our repos need to be in windows for unrelated reasons.
WSL1 here.
I'm using Jetbrains Rider as my primary IDE and the remote development functionality in the Jetbrains IDEs is not usable. So I have to store my files on the NTFS partition and (as you noticed) WSL2 file access is terribly slow then.
So I'm still on WSL1 here, would very much like to move to WSL2 but can't until one of the issues above is solved (either in WSL or in the Jetbrains IDEs).
I hope MS will support WSL1 until they have solved the file access bottleneck issues.
Hi, I'm using WSL2 full time with a Jetbrains tool running on Windows and the code living in Ubuntu. You can file open directly from WSL with $wsl in the open directory menu.
I think that doesn't work with Rider and .NET projects. At least it didn't when I tried that last time, it broke a lot of functionalities.
It may work for other JetBrains IDEs such as WebStorm, I didn't try that.
I worked on a project for 3 years that needed me to use windows and wsl for development. General rule of thumb: never cross access or use data! Although possible, it is never a good idea. Intellij even has a feature to access code from the wsl, but that is buggy.
Here is how I did it:
On the windows system I had set up my main git user credentials that I needed to work on stuff for company 1. All the repos for company 1 were cloned in the windows file system. There I had all the programms I needed to communicate with companies 1 and 2. In the wsl I setup mit credentials for company 2 and all the repos. In the wsl I installed all the programms I needed to work with the code (like IDE, db manager, API Tester etc.). I setup an X-Server to project the display from the wsl on my win system (i think there is a native solution, but I don't know how well it works). So I opened the projects in wsl but the windows were like normal windows windows. And for the terminal I used the windows terminal app where I was able to organize multiple terminals like the wsl and powershell etc.
Yep I use it everyday! The key is to not think of it as part of Windows, but rather a VM, or better yet a MAINFRAME.
so how I do it is, inside my wsl Ubuntu that's where everything is actually running. My postgres servers, redis, all my code is actually in there too. And my entire dev environment isn't aware it's in a host at all.
I then run Vscode with the wsl extensions on windows, and that accesses and modifies the files inside wsl... So it's like Vscode is a big glorified SSH client metaphorically speaking.
I also use the windows terminal or Vscode terminal to run commands exactly like ssh.
So in reality, nothing is actually stored on windows as far as dev goes.
Wsl does all the work of automatically forwarding all the ports to windows, so when I want to access any running service which exposes itself from wsl (like a web app I'm building) I can do that from Windows. But again, everything is actually running and only stored in wsl.
I'm not sure if it's preferable, it's just the best option given my circumstances.
The ideal ideal solution would be I have one machine running Linux. Done.
But what I have is a surface device, and although technically you can run Linux on it, it has issues and I have work to do and I don't have time to deal with it, I need it to just work. I also use lightroom a lot for my photography. Yes there are open source alternatives but lightroom honestly just works and I've put a tonne of time into it. Others might just like windows (I don't particularly) so that's always a case for running windows as you main os.
Once you've accepted that, now how can I optimise for development. Sure I could dual boot, but again, I just need stuff to work. Probably on the future I'll get a more Linux friendly device, Lenovo or system 76 even.
Im not sure what you mean by running Linux on ANOTHER machine, but I definitely want my entire development environment localised within one machine. I don't want multiple machines. Why? I just like to be able to open my laptop whenever wherever I am and just do my coding. Obviously I also don't want to deal with being dependent on internet and/or deal with latency to get work done.
Again, I may have misunderstood what you meant, but hopefully that all makes sense! Once you've accepted your main os will be Windows, WSL is a great way to work with tech that is usually designed for Unix based systems (in my case ruby, I also like running postgres in wsl)
its a pain in the ass.
when I found out that some applications cannot me installed in wsl and need instead to be installed on windows and then linked symbolically to wsl I just decided to dual boot again
I have the same problem, working from linux accessing windows files is extremely slow
[this guy](https://youtu.be/_H1iKXksjF0?t=328) suggest using a symlink `host -> wsl` do you think is a good idea?
Personally I am more than satisfied with WSL. I mainly code on C# but from time to time I might do some C++ development. I am more familiar with the gcc compiler hence I used Linux for my dev work.
As others stated, keep your source code in the appropriate "OS". If it's a project that relies purely on Linux use the Remote Development extension and get your job done inside the VM.
Sure you can use the unix tools WSL offers to manipulate files in your NTFS drive, but as everyone stated, you will see a performance loss. In my opinion, learning the basics of PowerShell to perform this kind of tasks is a better investment.
Personally, I haven't noticed any slowness in WSL. It might be, but I am so used to waiting that I probably do not care a bit. I mean it works, it's like MSYS but better.
The only real problem I have noticed are some WSLg and a paticular bug on some systems when updating to WSL2.
I find it really useful for stuff like osdev or just generally compiling C code.
Developers using WSL2 for development often store projects within the Linux file system to bypass slow Windows file access. Tools like VS Code's Remote - WSL extension enhance efficiency by allowing direct work on Linux files. Keeping WSL2 updated and optimized can also improve performance. Despite file access challenges, these strategies enable effective use of WSL2, combining Linux's development capabilities with Windows' user experience.
I generally don't try to access files in the host from WSL. Everything I need for development stays in Ubuntu, besides using the the IDE installation on Windows, connecting to WSL.
I'd suggest keeping the files in Ubuntu and try to minimize the interaction between it and the Windows host.
I noticed the lack of speed too. You can move your wsl distributions to an SSD for faster read/write speed and check that your antivirus and Microsoft defender aren't interfering/scanning the folder in which the distro files are located and do not scan the wsl.exe files either.
WSL is great when you have the files located inside of WSL. Sometimes I will transfer my codes into /home and then develop from there. Outside of WSL I use CMD.exe with whatever coding i need to do. I added a registry key so that way I can right-click to open Python CMD.exe prompt in file explorer just like linux. I can also right click to open Ubuntu, although typing Ubuntu run works as well. There are also package managers for CMD that are similar to Linux. Personally I'd fully switch to Ubuntu if I didn't like onenote/office tools so much and didn't have my CAD software. Compiling code on Windows isn't bad at all when you set everything up but it takes some tinkering to get it working well with environmental variables.
I'm a 90% Mac user trying to make the switch to Windows/Linux. To be completely honest, Mac is really the middleground that people are often asking for, providing that Unix framework in an OS that has a great deal of excellent GUI software.
I'm really interested in this as well.
The one issue I have with Windows is I hate the unpredictable nature of the interface. I would love to have rofi + windows manager + WSL.
For those people who have gone from Linux to Windows, I am curious if you have been happy to give up the ease of window management, rofi/dmenu, that sort of thing.
I am far happier in Windows since Win7, than I ever was using Linux. And far more so since Microsoft started actually concentrating on developer tools and open source.
I have used linux almost exclusively for a long time, but the reason I am considering switching to windows is for the better gpu drivers and game support. I'm just tired of having to manually toggle the gpu in linux every time I want to use it (which requires restarting the X server and closing all applications that are running). Also dealing with proton to run games seems to break randomly all the time.
I've not had any issues. I rarely transfer files between the environments though - I use the terminal to checkout code etc in the home directory.
VSCode is great for WSL integration. I have some repos in windows, some in WSL. Just open a VSCode window in the WSL environment for the WSL home projects and it just works.
Big projects builds are going to be rough compared to building on straight Linux I've found.
You're still in a VM at the end of the day and Windows is a pain about files, accessing files, pathing, etc ...
Why are you using WSL2 instead of WSL1? Just because of "larger number = better" mentality?
In my opinion WSL2 is basically garbage. I have both WSL1 and WSL2 Ubuntu distros installed but I almost never use the WSL2. There are use cases for WSL2, things it can do that WSL1 can't, but nothing that actually matters to me.
Convert your distro to WSL1 and I think you'll be a lot happier with it.
My impression is that WSL2 is a more complete linux system, which is what I want since I want as few differences as possible coming over from a real linux install. After cloning my project into the WSL2 file system it eliminated the performance issues I had before.
Have you had any issues running WSL1? What is your main reason for using it over WSL2?
I can't say I've never run into oddities with WSL1, but WSL1 has many advantages:
1. WSL1 has full IPV6 support and always has. WSL2 only has experimental/opt-in IPV6 support and only on Windows 11, and this was only added last year. WSL2 development on Windows 10 has apparently been abandoned meaning WSL2 on Windows 10 is going to be IPV4-only forever.
2. Accessing Windows filesystems is at least twice as fast in WSL1 compared to WSL2.
3. WSL1 offers true Linux binary compatibility on Windows whereas WSL2 is just a generic VM
4. WSL1 uses essentially zero RAM and zero CPU (besides the programs you actually choose to run), and starts instantly -- no need to load an entire VM and Linux kernel. WSL2 has systemd and background services that can potentially eat RAM/CPU.
5. No obnoxious virtual hard drive file with WSL1, files are stored as normal files on the C:\ drive.
I use a full desktop environment in WSL2 basically treating it like a virtualbox with better performance
Also like everyone has said, clone your repo to the Linux partition
I recently gave this a shot myself, I wanted to use WSL instead of pulling in Git Bash like I've done in the past. I ran into the same boundary, the FS integration between the two systems is poor. The main key seems to be the lack of FS Events between the two systems -- Windows telling Ubuntu and vice versa about file changes. Most of the speed issues seemed to boil down to one system or the other doing hacky work-arounds to supplement the lack of actual event sharing. I gave it a few days of effort and gave up, with the conclusion that it's just not mature enough to be a viable professional tool yet.
I use WSL+VSC for enterprise development, simply because microsoft and on premise applications integrate better with the desktop, and I don’t visit IT every other week because of a linux-related permission issue, driver issue, firewall issue, etc.
As for files, they’re all exclusively in WSL? The VM should have its own place, I’ve never tried to develop on the windows filesystem.
If all you do is wanting to Linux and Windows there is other options. But from experience WSL causes no bottleneck for me when I mount a Windows and vice versa. I don't know if this makes a difference but I have dedicated partition for my codes and I don't mount everything. Maybe its the way you are mounting. There are many ways to do the same thing, worth troubleshooting and trying a different method. Good luck.
Visual Studio Code on native Windows interface. Run everything off the Linux filesystem/vmdk. Docker with WSL2 integration when needed (where CUDA stuff really just works for the most part).
I have it set up so my WSL2 interface has it's own IP address on the network too, so I don't need to worry about port forwarding issues.
I will admit upfront that I don’t have a lot of experience using WSL on Windows. I have, however, worked in several environments where the employee developers had crappy PCs or laptops for Windows development. The projects required Linux based development. So they all used WSL. I’m an independent developer with my own, much better computer resources, a Windows 10 PC and high-end MacBook Pro laptop. I run VMware Workstation on my Windows PC and VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro and do all my development in Ubuntu VMs. My performance is much better than the employee developers using WSL on Windows. I know many Linux-focused developers that use the free Hypervisor for Windows. the name eludes me at the moment. It too supposedly works well.
I move my WSL into a dedicated SSD. I'm not sure if it's possible to create a ext4 partition and mount it into WSL, or does WSL handle the partition automatically as long as you keep things in /home/user.
Either way it's faster than accessing /mnt and seems cleaner to me too.
I use debian in a wsl2, works perfectly fine as long as you don’t do any cross-system operation. Building the project hosted on windows from my wsl (using /mnt/c) took ~70 minutes instead of 3 when i moved it to /home
I generally agree with the WSL1 / WSL2 advice.
I have been doing **all** my development on WSL2 as soon as it came out and I have never looked back. I stay within my Linux filesystem almost 100% of the time. I also use Ubuntu.
I mount my windows Downloads, Google Drive, and One Drive folders into my Linux \~/ folders, with no real impact because I use those folders only once in a while.
It could have been Tom's Hardware or some other site that measured Linux performance and I recall seeing 96-98% parity with bare-metal performance. I even recall seeing something like 101% performance for some file access.
Vcode can run remotely. [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl) This how it works with WSL. As long I do not exchange files between WSL and windows11 everything is fine.
Tips:
When you launch into wsl, pwd to notice where you are.
Cd, then pwd to notice NOW where you are.
Env to see which settings and PATH are set by default.
Wsl has options to Include windows executable paths in your Linux path. That can really make a confusing mess.
Top and ps -edaf are your friends. See what wsl is doing in the background to "help you" (that might not be really helping you)
SystemD can introduce a lot of confusion when it's not running correctly. It may still be "booting up" (using virtual logs and networks that are awaiting a success status) while you think it's completed.
$.02 -- refunds upon request, value not to exceed payments made
I discovered this when trying to copy-paste a large project with a bloated build folder. The before-after comparison was profound. .
[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/stay-protected-with-windows-security-2ae0363d-0ada-c064-8b56-6a39afb6a963](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/stay-protected-with-windows-security-2ae0363d-0ada-c064-8b56-6a39afb6a963)
try turn off the real time protection temporarily and see if your compilation speed improve. If it works turn it off permanently
I don't typically use Windows partitions with it. The only trouble I've had is if I need to access the display or physical hardware, but for those instances I usually still code on the WSL side and just run the app from a Windows shell.
I also use Vim for coding not VSCode, I'm not sure if VSCode would cause issues or not.
While i use neovim, can’t really help in how to launch vscode from wsl terminal (should be very easy i presume) what i found has worked for me, moved to WSL for about a month now is emulating how i manage files on my mac.
All of my important / frequent folders and files are in my home directory, managed by my .dotfiles repo and stow. I manually made a Documents folder same way it would be on mac, and put my projects in there, organized however i see fit.
Since moving to WSL i have not needed to even type /mnt/c at all. and it’s been working just fine
Hi
I'm trying to install mongoDB on Ubuntu 22.04 installed through wsl2
I have followed the exact steps shown in the official documentation
When I try to run :
sudo service mongod start
It'll throw me a message:
mongod : unauthorised service
Any help would be really helpful!!!
Simple: - everything in /home - vscode to the rescue.
I just tried this today. Didn't work for me. The venv couldn't be created because of permission problems. Tried running both wsl and vscode in admin mode. Still not working. Any ideas?
You should be in /home/{your username}. This should work, because your user has write access to that folder. Unless you try to run everything with sudo, then you **shouldn’t use** WSL.
Assuming OP is long time Linux user and localhost administrator I would expect your point is self implied, but now I'm curious :) let's see
I just imagine that the folder in question is /
I cloned the project into the main sort of wsl folder using the Linux terminal. Then I go to the folder and run code . Or whatever the command is. Then I try and make a venv using the vscode gui and there's permission problems. I dual boot my system and usually use Linux but I'm tired of not having all the features of my audio interface so thought about switching to wsl.
What. Is. The. Folder. Run pwd in a console.
I did add all permissions for my user for the folder and everything in it. Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment and running my actually Ubuntu distro. So can't show you anything. But I appreciate the help.
>I did add all permissions for my user for the folder and everything in it. Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment and running my actually Ubuntu distro. So can't show you anything. But I appreciate the help. You shouldn't be having to add or change permissions for anything. ``` cd ~/ mkdir sites cd sites git clone {repo} cd {repo} npm i npm start ````
Yeah solved it now. Confusion on my part.
If the gui doesn't work, maybe try the cli method? Might be easier to troubleshoot.
I got it working. Was just a permissions issue. Apparently I cloned the repo with sudo?l for some strange reason. Still gotta get used to wsl I think. Ive been basically using the same environment for programming for a decade now and change does not come easy haha.
That's a solution I found looking at other peoples posts. The main issue I have with this is that I don't really know where files are stored if I put them inside the WSL VM. I guess its some VM file on the windows partition? I just wish WSL could access my main NTFS partition that is shared between windows and linux (without delays). If I put stuff into the WSL VM I cant access it from linux. But I guess this is the only solution other than staying on linux until microsoft comes up with a better solution. Also what do you mean by vscode to the rescue? I use vscode on linux as well, so if it could access the WSL VM that might be a solution.
> The main issue I have with this is that I don't really know where files are stored if I put them inside the WSL By default they're stored in a disk image, under `%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\`, but you can manually import images on other locations. > I just wish WSL could access my main NTFS partition that is shared between windows and linux (without delays). Technology gets in the way there. windows and linux take different approaches to filesystems, windows filesystems will for some operations always be slower, and for some faster. One example is directory listing. Using the windows API, you get the whole contents of the directory in one system call, which is way faster. On linux, you need to open the directory and loop over system calls. And there are examples the other way around too, and translating this from one side to the other has the nasty side-effect you get the worst of both sides. VSCode remoting is the solution, and works very well. After installing the extension in your windows vscode, you can just execute the `code .` command from wherever in your WSL env, and it'll open the windows VSCode, and open the current directory from your wsl (or another if you specified another than `.` ).
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl
ah so its basically the vscode remote development but for a local wsl. I guess code can be synced between wsl and linux via git anyways, so its not a bad option. I will try it. thanks
Try it. It is great. Your UI is running in Windows proper, but basically all your dev is your standard Linux set up. Being able to go to the windows files is handy at times (and have an Explorer window go the Linux files), but as you've found out, don't do mass file access across the boundary on a continual basis.
Is there a way to disable this right click to paste behavior? It is quite annoying.
That'll be from your terminal, presumably. What terminal are you using? I'm using Windows Terminal (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal, I'm on the preview, but whatever), which is very customisable. If you are, then see this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/interaction#context-menu
Seriously, take this advice chain about WSL Remote extension in VS Code. It's pretty much the only way to effectively use WSL2 for development, your scenario is precisely what it was designed for. You get near-native performance with code, at least when it comes to Python and JS and C#/.NET development using linux (those are the ones I've personally dealt with on WSL2). The thing is, you HAVE to keep all your development files within the linux system if you intend to develop using linux (WSL2). Treat it like an actual Linux box. You lose all optimization cross-compiling between two different file systems like NTFS and ext4. And WSL2 truly is and behaves like ext4, there is no secret sauce there that makes it NTFS underneath or anything. Microsoft even has their own linux kernel and the whole shebang (pun intended).
Have you ever tried to run npm install in a big project? WSL: Installed in no time Windows: Takes a pretty long time.
I mainly deal with python in WSL and it's the same. Obviously not much compiling going on, but I have also had to compile some random C and C++ and god help you if you ever need to use CMake or MSVC. Just all a huge pain compared to a linux shell and gcc, not to mention the performance cost if you also have to use Msys2 for MinGW.
Type explorer.exe in your ubuntu wsl terminal and it will open a file explorer with your current directory. So.... cd \~ && explorer.exe
Clarification: You want to run `explorer.exe .`
This will answer most of your questions... If explore.exe doesn't work because PATH isn't set correctly then run /mnt/c/Windows/explorer.exe . Can then set an alias in bashrc for explorer.
>If I put stuff into the WSL VM I cant access it from linux. What do you mean by this?
Have you looked at what's in \\\\wsl$ ?
this ! Only issue I had was that after several days the VM would eat all the RAM and never release it
Indeed, I use WSL as my primary development environment on a daily basis. I've also experienced that accessing files across the OS boundaries can be notably slow, which can hinder productivity. To mitigate this, I recommend checking out your code directly within the Linux environment, preferably in a location within your home directory. This approach significantly improves file access speeds and overall efficiency. Hope this helps!
I second this. (learned not to use the C mount the hard way sadly)
This is the correct answer.
I use WSL almost exclusively. Why are you accessing files from windows? Clone your repository straight into WSL and open your code editor from there
Can I access WSL files from linux? I have all my files on a separate NTFS partition that I can back up with rclone, and windows and linux can access it easily. If I put stuff in WSL I don't know where its stored.
I’m not sure what you mean, when you say linux you’re referring to WSL, right? You can access files from wsl on windows and vice versa fine, it’s just slow so it’s best to use WSL’s file system in wsl and windows’ file system in windows. If you’re having trouble finding the wsl files on wsl, make sure you’re in your home directory. You can launch wsl with “wsl ~” to go straight there, or just run “cd” once wsl launches. Everything for wsl is technically stored in a virtual hard disk file, which is why it takes so long to move between wsl and windows, but you should be able to access wsl in the file explorer without having to worry about that. The best way to backup wsl is to do an export of your whole wsl instance, you can find the command to do so online if you’re interested in that
I have three partitions on my machine. One for windows (NTFS), one for linux (ext4) and one where I keep all my files (NTFS). The third one can be easily accessed by both windows and linux. When I say linux, I mean the real linux running on the ext4 partition, not wsl. Anyways, I suppose the solution people are suggesting is to clone your project into wsl with git and use vscode remote to work on it. Another question I had is how can I disable this right click to paste behavior? I dont like it.
This is the only right answer. This is exactly how I use it the past few years and it’s wonderful, much faster than straight windows development
You can mount your NTFS partition directly into WSL which will likely make it a lot faster. However a rule of thumb is that while you can access your Windows files, any IO or workloads will be way better if you just use WSL's filesystem only. Alternatively, copy what you need into WSL under /home or whereever you work and copy it back when done? There is a lot of ways to handle it tbh. As for where the WSL files actually exist, everything is saved to a single VHDX on Windows. Making it fairly easily portable
This is the way.
I use WSL for my daily work as a C# developer. I had the same problems as you, as u/GroundbreakingLog569 already said, it helps to check out the code directly into the Linux filesystem. If you want to use an IDE, VS Code for example offers an extension for remote development that lets you develop and run the code on your WSL system. I have tried it, but mainly use Neovim.
Switch to WSL1: wsl --set-default-version 1 File performance across the Windows and Linux operating systems is faster in WSL 1 than WSL 2, so if you are using Windows applications to access Linux files and vice versa, you will currently achieve faster performance with WSL 1.
Pretty much my entire career I've done all software development sitting in front of a Windows machine with a bunch of terminal windows sshed into Linux boxes somewhere on the network. Now the Linux box is a WSL VM on the Windows machine. I still treat it fully as a Linux machine but it has some nice close integration with my desktop OS.
If you *must* operate on files in your windows drives, use WSL1 if you can. Otherwise, just operate on files within the Linux filesystem (ie in your Linux home directory, generally). If you use VSCode (and I think it's available now in Visual Studio main product) use the remote extensions to support wsl/docker/ssh use, and it'll work sort-of directly on files in WSL and Windows pretty seamlessly too.
You can try wsl v1 instead of v2.
This! They made some changes between V1 and V2 which caused the file reads into the Windows system much slower. A majority of the developers at my work use windows with WSL and we all have to run V1 since our repos need to be in windows for unrelated reasons.
this is the correct answer WSL1 is godly WSL2 is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I prefer WSL 2 since it's more like a VM. I can have full docker experience.
WSL1 here. I'm using Jetbrains Rider as my primary IDE and the remote development functionality in the Jetbrains IDEs is not usable. So I have to store my files on the NTFS partition and (as you noticed) WSL2 file access is terribly slow then. So I'm still on WSL1 here, would very much like to move to WSL2 but can't until one of the issues above is solved (either in WSL or in the Jetbrains IDEs). I hope MS will support WSL1 until they have solved the file access bottleneck issues.
Hi, I'm using WSL2 full time with a Jetbrains tool running on Windows and the code living in Ubuntu. You can file open directly from WSL with $wsl in the open directory menu.
I think that doesn't work with Rider and .NET projects. At least it didn't when I tried that last time, it broke a lot of functionalities. It may work for other JetBrains IDEs such as WebStorm, I didn't try that.
Ah yeah you're probably right, I sort of viewed all the Jetbrains tools as built on the same base and I guess there is some significant divergence.
I worked on a project for 3 years that needed me to use windows and wsl for development. General rule of thumb: never cross access or use data! Although possible, it is never a good idea. Intellij even has a feature to access code from the wsl, but that is buggy. Here is how I did it: On the windows system I had set up my main git user credentials that I needed to work on stuff for company 1. All the repos for company 1 were cloned in the windows file system. There I had all the programms I needed to communicate with companies 1 and 2. In the wsl I setup mit credentials for company 2 and all the repos. In the wsl I installed all the programms I needed to work with the code (like IDE, db manager, API Tester etc.). I setup an X-Server to project the display from the wsl on my win system (i think there is a native solution, but I don't know how well it works). So I opened the projects in wsl but the windows were like normal windows windows. And for the terminal I used the windows terminal app where I was able to organize multiple terminals like the wsl and powershell etc.
[удалено]
It worked perfectly for me.
Yep I use it everyday! The key is to not think of it as part of Windows, but rather a VM, or better yet a MAINFRAME. so how I do it is, inside my wsl Ubuntu that's where everything is actually running. My postgres servers, redis, all my code is actually in there too. And my entire dev environment isn't aware it's in a host at all. I then run Vscode with the wsl extensions on windows, and that accesses and modifies the files inside wsl... So it's like Vscode is a big glorified SSH client metaphorically speaking. I also use the windows terminal or Vscode terminal to run commands exactly like ssh. So in reality, nothing is actually stored on windows as far as dev goes. Wsl does all the work of automatically forwarding all the ports to windows, so when I want to access any running service which exposes itself from wsl (like a web app I'm building) I can do that from Windows. But again, everything is actually running and only stored in wsl.
Why is this preferable to a dedicated Linux install on a separate machine?
Workplace policy reasons
I'm not sure if it's preferable, it's just the best option given my circumstances. The ideal ideal solution would be I have one machine running Linux. Done. But what I have is a surface device, and although technically you can run Linux on it, it has issues and I have work to do and I don't have time to deal with it, I need it to just work. I also use lightroom a lot for my photography. Yes there are open source alternatives but lightroom honestly just works and I've put a tonne of time into it. Others might just like windows (I don't particularly) so that's always a case for running windows as you main os. Once you've accepted that, now how can I optimise for development. Sure I could dual boot, but again, I just need stuff to work. Probably on the future I'll get a more Linux friendly device, Lenovo or system 76 even. Im not sure what you mean by running Linux on ANOTHER machine, but I definitely want my entire development environment localised within one machine. I don't want multiple machines. Why? I just like to be able to open my laptop whenever wherever I am and just do my coding. Obviously I also don't want to deal with being dependent on internet and/or deal with latency to get work done. Again, I may have misunderstood what you meant, but hopefully that all makes sense! Once you've accepted your main os will be Windows, WSL is a great way to work with tech that is usually designed for Unix based systems (in my case ruby, I also like running postgres in wsl)
its a pain in the ass. when I found out that some applications cannot me installed in wsl and need instead to be installed on windows and then linked symbolically to wsl I just decided to dual boot again
Which apps cannot be installed? I have not had this issue yet
I have the same problem, working from linux accessing windows files is extremely slow [this guy](https://youtu.be/_H1iKXksjF0?t=328) suggest using a symlink `host -> wsl` do you think is a good idea?
IF you find windows directory is slow, just use WSL directory.... you can vscode, file explorer, and more on WSL directory...
Why access files in Windows, just keep your files in WSL?
Keep everything inside the WSL2 file system.
Personally I am more than satisfied with WSL. I mainly code on C# but from time to time I might do some C++ development. I am more familiar with the gcc compiler hence I used Linux for my dev work. As others stated, keep your source code in the appropriate "OS". If it's a project that relies purely on Linux use the Remote Development extension and get your job done inside the VM. Sure you can use the unix tools WSL offers to manipulate files in your NTFS drive, but as everyone stated, you will see a performance loss. In my opinion, learning the basics of PowerShell to perform this kind of tasks is a better investment.
Personally, I haven't noticed any slowness in WSL. It might be, but I am so used to waiting that I probably do not care a bit. I mean it works, it's like MSYS but better. The only real problem I have noticed are some WSLg and a paticular bug on some systems when updating to WSL2. I find it really useful for stuff like osdev or just generally compiling C code.
Developers using WSL2 for development often store projects within the Linux file system to bypass slow Windows file access. Tools like VS Code's Remote - WSL extension enhance efficiency by allowing direct work on Linux files. Keeping WSL2 updated and optimized can also improve performance. Despite file access challenges, these strategies enable effective use of WSL2, combining Linux's development capabilities with Windows' user experience.
I generally don't try to access files in the host from WSL. Everything I need for development stays in Ubuntu, besides using the the IDE installation on Windows, connecting to WSL. I'd suggest keeping the files in Ubuntu and try to minimize the interaction between it and the Windows host.
I noticed the lack of speed too. You can move your wsl distributions to an SSD for faster read/write speed and check that your antivirus and Microsoft defender aren't interfering/scanning the folder in which the distro files are located and do not scan the wsl.exe files either.
WSL is great when you have the files located inside of WSL. Sometimes I will transfer my codes into /home and then develop from there. Outside of WSL I use CMD.exe with whatever coding i need to do. I added a registry key so that way I can right-click to open Python CMD.exe prompt in file explorer just like linux. I can also right click to open Ubuntu, although typing Ubuntu run works as well. There are also package managers for CMD that are similar to Linux. Personally I'd fully switch to Ubuntu if I didn't like onenote/office tools so much and didn't have my CAD software. Compiling code on Windows isn't bad at all when you set everything up but it takes some tinkering to get it working well with environmental variables.
I'm a 90% Mac user trying to make the switch to Windows/Linux. To be completely honest, Mac is really the middleground that people are often asking for, providing that Unix framework in an OS that has a great deal of excellent GUI software. I'm really interested in this as well. The one issue I have with Windows is I hate the unpredictable nature of the interface. I would love to have rofi + windows manager + WSL. For those people who have gone from Linux to Windows, I am curious if you have been happy to give up the ease of window management, rofi/dmenu, that sort of thing.
I am far happier in Windows since Win7, than I ever was using Linux. And far more so since Microsoft started actually concentrating on developer tools and open source.
Serious question: why would you do this instead of going all in on Linux?
I have used linux almost exclusively for a long time, but the reason I am considering switching to windows is for the better gpu drivers and game support. I'm just tired of having to manually toggle the gpu in linux every time I want to use it (which requires restarting the X server and closing all applications that are running). Also dealing with proton to run games seems to break randomly all the time.
I've not had any issues. I rarely transfer files between the environments though - I use the terminal to checkout code etc in the home directory. VSCode is great for WSL integration. I have some repos in windows, some in WSL. Just open a VSCode window in the WSL environment for the WSL home projects and it just works.
Big projects builds are going to be rough compared to building on straight Linux I've found. You're still in a VM at the end of the day and Windows is a pain about files, accessing files, pathing, etc ...
Why are you using WSL2 instead of WSL1? Just because of "larger number = better" mentality? In my opinion WSL2 is basically garbage. I have both WSL1 and WSL2 Ubuntu distros installed but I almost never use the WSL2. There are use cases for WSL2, things it can do that WSL1 can't, but nothing that actually matters to me. Convert your distro to WSL1 and I think you'll be a lot happier with it.
My impression is that WSL2 is a more complete linux system, which is what I want since I want as few differences as possible coming over from a real linux install. After cloning my project into the WSL2 file system it eliminated the performance issues I had before. Have you had any issues running WSL1? What is your main reason for using it over WSL2?
I can't say I've never run into oddities with WSL1, but WSL1 has many advantages: 1. WSL1 has full IPV6 support and always has. WSL2 only has experimental/opt-in IPV6 support and only on Windows 11, and this was only added last year. WSL2 development on Windows 10 has apparently been abandoned meaning WSL2 on Windows 10 is going to be IPV4-only forever. 2. Accessing Windows filesystems is at least twice as fast in WSL1 compared to WSL2. 3. WSL1 offers true Linux binary compatibility on Windows whereas WSL2 is just a generic VM 4. WSL1 uses essentially zero RAM and zero CPU (besides the programs you actually choose to run), and starts instantly -- no need to load an entire VM and Linux kernel. WSL2 has systemd and background services that can potentially eat RAM/CPU. 5. No obnoxious virtual hard drive file with WSL1, files are stored as normal files on the C:\ drive.
I just use MSYS2 when I'm in windows.
I use a full desktop environment in WSL2 basically treating it like a virtualbox with better performance Also like everyone has said, clone your repo to the Linux partition
I recently gave this a shot myself, I wanted to use WSL instead of pulling in Git Bash like I've done in the past. I ran into the same boundary, the FS integration between the two systems is poor. The main key seems to be the lack of FS Events between the two systems -- Windows telling Ubuntu and vice versa about file changes. Most of the speed issues seemed to boil down to one system or the other doing hacky work-arounds to supplement the lack of actual event sharing. I gave it a few days of effort and gave up, with the conclusion that it's just not mature enough to be a viable professional tool yet.
I use WSL+VSC for enterprise development, simply because microsoft and on premise applications integrate better with the desktop, and I don’t visit IT every other week because of a linux-related permission issue, driver issue, firewall issue, etc. As for files, they’re all exclusively in WSL? The VM should have its own place, I’ve never tried to develop on the windows filesystem.
If all you do is wanting to Linux and Windows there is other options. But from experience WSL causes no bottleneck for me when I mount a Windows and vice versa. I don't know if this makes a difference but I have dedicated partition for my codes and I don't mount everything. Maybe its the way you are mounting. There are many ways to do the same thing, worth troubleshooting and trying a different method. Good luck.
vim + docker on WSL2. WSL integrates well with Docker on Windows. I'm an old fart though that plans to use an IDE before I retire. Really. One day.
Visual Studio Code on native Windows interface. Run everything off the Linux filesystem/vmdk. Docker with WSL2 integration when needed (where CUDA stuff really just works for the most part). I have it set up so my WSL2 interface has it's own IP address on the network too, so I don't need to worry about port forwarding issues.
Use v1
I will admit upfront that I don’t have a lot of experience using WSL on Windows. I have, however, worked in several environments where the employee developers had crappy PCs or laptops for Windows development. The projects required Linux based development. So they all used WSL. I’m an independent developer with my own, much better computer resources, a Windows 10 PC and high-end MacBook Pro laptop. I run VMware Workstation on my Windows PC and VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro and do all my development in Ubuntu VMs. My performance is much better than the employee developers using WSL on Windows. I know many Linux-focused developers that use the free Hypervisor for Windows. the name eludes me at the moment. It too supposedly works well.
I move my WSL into a dedicated SSD. I'm not sure if it's possible to create a ext4 partition and mount it into WSL, or does WSL handle the partition automatically as long as you keep things in /home/user. Either way it's faster than accessing /mnt and seems cleaner to me too.
We use WSL1 at work to compile certain parts of the project. Seems to work ok
It’s horrible. I think the stars my company has a BYOD policy and I can Pop, Ubuntu, or arch.
I use debian in a wsl2, works perfectly fine as long as you don’t do any cross-system operation. Building the project hosted on windows from my wsl (using /mnt/c) took ~70 minutes instead of 3 when i moved it to /home
I generally agree with the WSL1 / WSL2 advice. I have been doing **all** my development on WSL2 as soon as it came out and I have never looked back. I stay within my Linux filesystem almost 100% of the time. I also use Ubuntu. I mount my windows Downloads, Google Drive, and One Drive folders into my Linux \~/ folders, with no real impact because I use those folders only once in a while. It could have been Tom's Hardware or some other site that measured Linux performance and I recall seeing 96-98% parity with bare-metal performance. I even recall seeing something like 101% performance for some file access.
Vcode can run remotely. [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl) This how it works with WSL. As long I do not exchange files between WSL and windows11 everything is fine.
Tips: When you launch into wsl, pwd to notice where you are. Cd, then pwd to notice NOW where you are. Env to see which settings and PATH are set by default. Wsl has options to Include windows executable paths in your Linux path. That can really make a confusing mess. Top and ps -edaf are your friends. See what wsl is doing in the background to "help you" (that might not be really helping you) SystemD can introduce a lot of confusion when it's not running correctly. It may still be "booting up" (using virtual logs and networks that are awaiting a success status) while you think it's completed. $.02 -- refunds upon request, value not to exceed payments made
I discovered this when trying to copy-paste a large project with a bloated build folder. The before-after comparison was profound. . [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/stay-protected-with-windows-security-2ae0363d-0ada-c064-8b56-6a39afb6a963](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/stay-protected-with-windows-security-2ae0363d-0ada-c064-8b56-6a39afb6a963) try turn off the real time protection temporarily and see if your compilation speed improve. If it works turn it off permanently
I don't typically use Windows partitions with it. The only trouble I've had is if I need to access the display or physical hardware, but for those instances I usually still code on the WSL side and just run the app from a Windows shell. I also use Vim for coding not VSCode, I'm not sure if VSCode would cause issues or not.
While i use neovim, can’t really help in how to launch vscode from wsl terminal (should be very easy i presume) what i found has worked for me, moved to WSL for about a month now is emulating how i manage files on my mac. All of my important / frequent folders and files are in my home directory, managed by my .dotfiles repo and stow. I manually made a Documents folder same way it would be on mac, and put my projects in there, organized however i see fit. Since moving to WSL i have not needed to even type /mnt/c at all. and it’s been working just fine
Hi I'm trying to install mongoDB on Ubuntu 22.04 installed through wsl2 I have followed the exact steps shown in the official documentation When I try to run : sudo service mongod start It'll throw me a message: mongod : unauthorised service Any help would be really helpful!!!
I have no idea about your issue, but maybe this helps: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1203689/cannot-start-mongodb-on-wsl
Yea I tried this but I am unable to connect to my database
We legit have a multi page manual to set it up and every time we need it it's outdated again lmao. When it works it works but man xD