For instance, the Users folder under C:\ can be accessed via /mnt/c/Users (note that casing matters under Linux). By default, all your drives are mounted automatically.
Accessing Windows FilesĪccessing Windows files from WSL is quite straightforward. A more detailed guide can be found on MSDN.
To enable WSL, you just need to turn on Windows Subsystem for Linux among Windows Features, and install your preferred distro from the Windows Store.
If you use a different distro, you may need some additional tweaks.Īfter the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, WSL is out of beta and the installation is much easier. Installationįor reference, I have the Windows Fall Creators Updated installed, and I will use the Ubuntu distro as an example. The WSL team definitely put a lot of hard work into it. Having a SSD may alleviate this issue, but the overall disk performance is not good enough.ĭespite the above limitations, WSL is still a very helpful add-on to Windows 10. As a result, compilations feel slower in WSL. You can upvote for GPU support here.ĭisk IO is slower compared with native Linux installations. Consequently, numerical computations in WSL can only be done on CPU (actually CPU performance is pretty good in WSL). For instance, you cannot access GPUs in WSL. Not all hardware resources are available in WSL. You can also check this community maintained list of programs that work (and those that don't) under the WSL. You can track the updates of WSL by following the WSL blog. While many Linux programs runs fine under WSL, it does have its limitations:īecause not all system calls have been implemented, not all Linux programs will run flawlessly under WSL. You no longer need the overhead to boot up a virtual machine (or even worse, switching between Windows and Linux on a dual boot system). Therefore, WSL can be very convenient if you need to run some Linux only program in a Windows development environment. Basically, it is like a "wine" on Windows for Linux executables. It implements a compatibility layer that translates Linux system calls to Windows system calls. It enables running unmodified Linux binaries in Windows without creating a virtual machine. Window Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is an optional feature of Windows 10.
So how to install MPD and ncmpcpp, configure ‘em and get it all up running on a (de facto default) PulseAudio Debian box? So let’s break it down and take one step at a time… Install and configure MPDĪs usual, installing MPD is as easy as it gets:Ĭonfiguration is pretty straight forward as well, here I’m using the system wide default Debian configuration located in /etc/mpd.What is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)? My recommendation: Just go try it out, you might like it so much that you’ll never look back!