Chapter 1: Introduction to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

In this chapter, you will learn some of the use cases for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and start to get an idea of what WSL actually is, and how it compares to just running a Linux virtual machine. This will aid us in our understanding of the rest of the book, where we will learn all about WSL and how to install and configure it, as well as picking up tips for getting the most from it for your developer workflows.

With WSL, you can run Linux utilities on Windows to help get your work done. You can build Linux applications using native Linux tooling such as debuggers, opening up a world of projects that only have Linux-based build systems. Many of these projects also produce Windows binaries as an output but are otherwise hard for Windows developers to access and contribute to. But because WSL gives you the combined power of Windows and Linux, you can do all of this and still use your favorite Windows utilities as part of your flow.

This book focuses on version 2 of WSL, which is a major reworking of the feature and this chapter will give you an overview of how this version works as well as how it compares to version 1.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics in particular:

• What is WSL?
• Exploring the differences between WSL 1 and 2

So, let's begin by defining WSL!