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Re: Running debian on WSL (windows-system-for-linux)



On 3/25/21 8:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
Does anybody have any experience running debian on a WSL
(windows-system-for-linux) machine?

I need to get a machine for family use, but i would also like to be able to
also use it myself.  So i would like to be able to ssh in, back up files
into it, and do other tasks, maybe even a little programming on it.  (A mac
can handle all of this sort of thing quite easily, but has a huge price
tag.)

At a job a couple of years ago i put WSL on the windows desktop machine
they gave me, but i was not in a position to be very aggressive about
remote usage, and, as i understand it, WSL has evolved since then.  And,
even then, WSL was more than just a virtual machine guest.

In particular, i would like to
(a) be able to remotely access the WSL debian just as if it were debian
box, including having ssh, rsync, and x windows
(b) occasionally do the same sorts of things from its console
(c) not have to manually set up and keep alive daemons or special services,
(d) as an extra, keep the debian and windows things on separate disks, if
possible.

I'm not looking for a multi-boot situation, as i want to be able to access
the WSL apparatus while the console is engaged with doing windows
operations for somebody else (and i guess the converse as well, although
i'm pretty foggy about sshing into windows).

Thanks in advance for any advice or pointers.


AIUI WSL is effectively a Linux distribution paravirtualized into Windows. And, there is no such thing as installing another Linux distribution on top of WSL.


If WSL does not meet your needs, perhaps Cygwin can. Cygwin offers packages for common Unix utilities. I have installed and I use ssh, sshd, cvs, vim, rsync, gcc, make, perl, and others.


David


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