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Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

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Re: Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

#12

I'll be interested in hearing from anyone who uses this and finds it offers them more than they are currently getting from cygwin or VMware+Linux VM. I realize it's a very different beast from cygwin - an entire User Mode Linux environment, as opposed to being able to download windows versions of the Linux Environment, but, on a day to day basis, It will be interesting to see what people do differently, and why they…

One serious advantage to WLS over a VM, is you don't have yet another layer of NAT at play... That's the biggest one to come to mind... you also don't have a fully linux system spun up to work on a few tasks in a bash prompt.

Don't get me wrong, I've been fine using a "remote" VM machine locally for linux, and a lot of my work the past few years has been that way (CIFS in the VM, to run a gui editor on the desktop), but to be able to run closer to native is a good thing imho... hopefully it stays well supported.

Re: Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

#13
post #9

I'll be interested in hearing from anyone who uses this and finds it offers them more than they are currently getting from cygwin or VMware+Linux VM. I realize it's a very different beast from cygwin - an entire User Mode Linux environment, as opposed to being able to download windows versions of the Linux Environment, but, on a day to day basis, It will be interesting to see what people do differently, and why they…

My potential use case: run the IDE on the host (Windows UI is fast, font rendering is great), but use git, etc. from the Linux command line (to get file permissions, etc. right).

I've been doing that for a while, I setup Samba in the VM, and map a drive in the windows host... Works pretty well.

Re: Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

#15
post #7

What a time to be alive! I'm holding out on upgrading to Win10 until I buy a new PC since my 7 -> 10 upgrade ties to hardware, but I hope to have that done by the end of next month. I can't wait to try this out. edit: Specifically, I want to understand to what extent - if any - will it allow some of the horror problems you have working with certain Python libraries (compiling Numpy on Windows is like pulling teeth) t…

If anything it's going to make it worse. When you type python in a command prompt which version is going to run, the windows version or the Ubuntu version? Even worse when you pip install a package what pip are you running, windows or Ubuntu?

Python on Windows is painful mostly because of the amount of binary packages that have to be compiled since distributing binary packages hasn't been in vogue until only recently with Python. You can save a ton of trouble using something like Anaconda, or honestly just run a Linux VM. If you're compiling numpy you're doing something wrong IMHO--use a prebuilt version that's optimized for your processor (ideally using Intel's commercial compiler with full SSE, etc. optimizations).

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