You're reading from Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) Tips, Tricks, and Techniques Maximise productivity of your Windows 10 development machine with custom workflows and configurations

Product type Paperback

Published in Oct 2020

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781800562448

Length 246 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Linux

Concepts

Shell Scripting

Author (1):

Stuart Leeks

View More author details

Table of Contents (16) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: Introduction, Installation, and Configuration

2. Chapter 1: Introduction to the Windows Subsystem for Linux FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Installing and Configuring the Windows Subsystem for Linux

4. Chapter 3: Getting Started with Windows Terminal

5. Section 2:Windows and Linux – A Winning Combination

6. Chapter 4: Windows to Linux Interoperability

7. Chapter 5: Linux to Windows Interoperability

8. Chapter 6: Getting More from Windows Terminal

9. Chapter 7: Working with Containers in WSL

10. Chapter 8: Working with WSL Distros

11. Section 3: Developing with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

12. Chapter 9: Visual Studio Code and WSL

13. Chapter 10: Visual Studio Code and Containers

14. Chapter 11: Productivity Tips with Command-Line Tools

15. Other Books You May Enjoy

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Accessing Linux files from Windows

When you have WSL installed, you get a new \\wsl$ path that you can address in Windows Explorer and other programs. If you type \\wsl$ into the address bar in Windows Explorer, it will list any running Linux distributions (distros) as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 4.1 – A screenshot showing \\wls$ in Windows Explorer

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, each running distro shows as a path under \\wsl$. Each \\wsl$\<distroname> is the path to the root of the file system for <distroname>. For example, \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04 is the Windows path for accessing the root of the file system for the Ubuntu-20.04 distro from Windows. This is a very flexible and powerful capability bringing full access to the file systems of your Linux distros to Windows.

The following screenshot shows the \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\stuart\tmp path in Windows Explorer. This corresponds to the ~/tmp folder in the Ubuntu...