win10_wsl2_debian11

01. Tutorial to install Linux on Windows. Linux everywhere! (win10_wsl2_debian11) (2022-03)
version: 1.0 date: 2022-09-03 author: bestia.dev repository: GitHub

Hashtags: #rustlang #tutorial
My projects on GitHub are more like a tutorial than a finished product: bestia-dev tutorials.

For 30 years of my professional life, I programmed in Windows. It was good.
I am on a long vacation now and is time to learn something new.

This project has also a youtube video tutorial. Watch it:

Linux everywhere

My conclusion is that Windows (and MacOS) should just die a long death and be replaced by Linux.
Microsoft obviously concluded the same, therefor they introduced WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Now we can run more and more Linux programs inside Windows. So Windows is less and less interesting to programmers.
MacOS and iOS are already similar to Linux because they are based on BSD, a cousin of Unix.
Android is basically a bastard child of Linux and Google.
Almost all the web servers and servers in the cloud are Linux today.
So today it makes sense to do all the programming only for Linux.

standard modern GUI

The "elephant in the room" is the GUI. Every OS has on purpose made the GUI different and completely incompatible. Sadly! But we have a strong international standard for GUI that works literally everywhere: it is HTML+CSS+JavascriptEngine.
I explicitly didn't say Javascript, let's call it by its true name ECMAScript because it is an abomination.
Fortunately, we have now WebAssembly abbreviated as WASM to save the day.
We can finally make client programs for the browser in some "normal" programming languages like Rust and many others.

Win10

Win10 is so ubiquitous that I have nothing interesting to say. It works just fine with all the drivers and peripherals and it comes preinstalled on most of the notebooks. We can say it is a winning OS in the desktop/notebook segment. In the enterprise world, Microsoft still has a firm grip with its Office suite. Blue-collar workers are just hooked to it like drug addicts even when there are good alternatives.
But Windows lost completely in the server segment and shamefully in the smartphone segment.
We "must" use it on notebooks because of the drivers, but it is slowly dying.
I don't have any opinion of Win11. Microsoft "promised" that Win10 was the last version of Windows and that the number will last forever and be free. In the background, there will be minor and major updates. They broke their promise. I think nobody really loves Win11.
It looks more like they are trying to push people away from Windows on purpose.

Installing WSL2

WSL2 is a revolution. With it, I have a lightweight virtual machine with a true Linux kernel. On my Lenovo notebook, I have Win10 and it works fine with all the drivers and peripherals, but now I have also Linux, so I can do some serious programming for the Linux cloud servers. Not just one Linux, I can have multiple Linux OS simultaneously on the same machine because they run in a VM.
Let's install/enable it on Win10:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10#update-to-wsl-2
Open PowerShell Run as Administrator:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
# restart and update to WSL2
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart
# MANDATORY RESTART YOUR MACHINE !
# if not, the wsl --help command will not have the --set-default-version argument !
# Set WSL2 as default
wsl --set-default-version 2

I get the error: WSL 2 requires an update to its kernel component.
Visit https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel and do the update.

# I can update the wsl now
wsl --update
# then shutdown the wsl for update to take effect
wsl --shutdown
# 
wsl --list --online

Debian11 - Bullseye

Debian is considered the grandfather of Linux-based operating systems. The Linux OSes are called "distribution" or "distro". All of them have in common the Linux Kernel developed firstly by Linux Torvald, but they differ in other components that make an Operating system.
Debian is conservative in its release cycle to ensure high stability. Some say that it is boringly stable ;-) I am old and I like "stable".
Some distros are derived from Debian and share a lot with it. Everybody has heard of Ubuntu, a big Linux popularity success for desktops.
The new version of Debian is 11. Every version has its unique name, version 11 is called Bullseye. Nice name.
Use the Microsoft Store to install Debian inside WSL2:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/debian/9msvkqc78pk6

or in PowerShell a few lines:

# list the distros
wsl --list --online
# install Debian
wsl --install -d Debian

Now we can open the Debian bash terminal using the provided icon or we can type wsl or Debian in the start menu, command prompt or PowerShell terminal. This Debian is without the GUI desktop. We could additionally install it, but we will rarely need it. A lot of Linux programs for programmers work just fine in the non-GUI mode inside a bash terminal.
The windows User is automatically also a Debian user.

In the bash terminal we can type these commands to update/upgrade Debian packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y full-upgrade
cat /etc/debian_version
# 11.4

WSL2 works very fast with its own filesystem.
From Linux, we can access the win10 filesystem mounted on /mnt/c/, but this is very slow.
From Windows, we can access the Linux files on \\wsl$\Debian\. But sometimes we got an additional annoying file "*.attr" for attributes that differ on the 2 filesystems. I always delete it.

Removing Debian

If you want a fresh new installation of Debian it is easy to remove the existing one in the cmd prompt:

# get the exact distro name
wsl -l -v
wsl --unregister Debian

Removing WSL2

If you need to remove WSL2 open PowerShell Run as Administrator:

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Read how I create a complete Rust development environment inside a Docker Container and how I use my Rust Development Environment.

Quirks

network connection after sleep

After putting the laptop to sleep, sometimes the WSL2 does not work right. When I need to use localhost or 127.0.0.1 connection from Win10 to a Linux program, the connection is broken. I have to restart the WSL in PowerShell Run as administrator with
Get-Service LxssManager | Restart-Service.
Not nice and very difficult to discover because WSL2 is running just fine, except for this.

external disk obsolete content

Sometimes the content of an external disk is completely wrong when looked at from the WSL2. It is obsolete, something that is a remnant of other external disks. I think I unmounted the mnt/d in Linux and then mount it back to solve the problem.

git repository corruption

My git repository inside WSL2 got corrupted. It looks that this happens to many people on WSL2.
The cure is:

# backup the repo first!
find .git/objects/ -type f -empty | xargs rm
git fetch -p
git fsck --full

Open-source and free as a beer

My open-source projects are free as a beer (MIT license).
I just love programming.
But I need also to drink. If you find my projects and tutorials helpful, please buy me a beer by donating to my PayPal.
You know the price of a beer in your local bar ;-)
So I can drink a free beer for your health :-)
Na zdravje! Alla salute! Prost! Nazdravlje! 🍻

//bestia.dev
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