[GTALUG] Any experience with "Linux on Windows"?

[William Park]

Here are different ways (chronologically encounted) to get "Linux"
environment in Windows:

1. Busybox for Windows 
    - it's single binary, available in x32 and x64 version.
    - has "ncat", but no "ssh".

2. Cygwin
    - full Linux utilities (like sed, awk, bash, etc) compiled on
      Windows.
    - I don't use this anymore because I found better solutions (see
      below).

3. Git Bash for Windows
    - part of Git for Windows.
    - has "ssh", but no "ncat".

4. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)
    - currently Ubuntu 18.04 from Windows Store.  This my main terminal
      at work.
    - has full command-line Ubuntu environment, but slightly slimmed
      down to make sense for Windows OS.
    - can run Windows programs, if you're on Windows filesystem.  Very
      convenient.
    - can run Linux program anywhere.

5. Hyper-V
    - unlike VirtualBox or VMware, you can't mount "shared directory".
      But, you can use scp or WinSCP to/from WSL.  I don't use
      VirtualBox or VMware anymore.
-- 
William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 07:53:31PM -0500, Paul King via talk wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I have been running dual boot into Windows and Linus for decades, but
> had a major problem with the latest Windows 10  in dual booting with
> Ubuntu. Apparently, I have heard (can't locate the source) booting
> into Linux can no longer be done on the latest major upgrade to
> Windows 10. And this was my direct experience when a Windows 10
> upgrade this past September all but bricked by computer, rendering 50%
> of my storage inaccessible. I tried to check the boot area, and fix
> the situation with a Windows disk then a Linux disk, which rendered
> both systems unbootable.  The problem pretty much solved itself when I
> downgraded to Windows 7, not touching Linux.
> 
> Whether it boots or not may be moot, since Windows has offered many
> Linux distros to run in a windowed environment on top of Windows 10,
> kind of like VLC. That is to say, you go to the Microsoft Store,
> download a Linux distro, and it will install as a Windows application
> under Windows 10. Sample link:
> https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/p/ubuntu-1804-lts/9n9tngvndl3q?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
> 
> The link points to a copy of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I can see from the
> offerings, you can also install Debian, Suse, Fedora, and something
> called "Pengwin". Beware: some of these cost money, sometimes a fair
> chunk of it.
> 
> It begs the question also as to how different are these distros from
> Cygwin? Sounds like these are just different attempts to duplicate
> what Cygwin is doing. BTW, Cygwin itself is not offered at the
> Microsoft store.
> 
> Anyone have experiences with these weird versions of Linux  running on
> Windows? I would like to hear about it. Any experience with how it
> would look with a dual monitor?
> 
> Paul King
> 
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