tag
32 posts
A complete walkthrough shrinking a WSL2 distro's .vhdx file back down after deleting large amounts of data — the specific diskpart steps that actually reclaim the space Windows doesn't release automatically.
A complete walkthrough editing and debugging code that lives inside your WSL distro, using a Windows-installed VS Code, without ever copying files to the Windows side or fighting cross-filesystem performance.
A complete walkthrough exporting a WSL distro's entire state to a portable file, and restoring it later — on the same machine after a problem, or on an entirely different machine.
A complete walkthrough switching between WSL2's default NAT networking and mirrored networking mode — and how to verify which one actually solves your specific reachability problem.
A complete walkthrough getting Docker Desktop configured to use WSL2 as its backend, integrating specific distros, and verifying containers actually run using WSL2's real Linux kernel rather than a separate VM.
A complete walkthrough turning on systemd support in a WSL2 distro — configuration, the required restart, and verifying services actually manage correctly afterward.
A complete walkthrough getting an NVIDIA GPU working for CUDA-accelerated machine learning workloads inside WSL2 — driver setup, verification, and running an actual PyTorch or TensorFlow workload against it.
A complete walkthrough of both directions of file access — reaching Windows files from Linux, and Linux files from Windows — plus the performance-driven rule for deciding where a given project's files should actually live.
A complete walkthrough of the global .wslconfig file — setting memory, CPU, swap, and networking behavior for every WSL2 distro on your machine from one central configuration file.
Each WSL2 distro's filesystem lives inside a dynamically-expanding .vhdx file on your Windows drive. It grows automatically as you use it — but deleting files inside WSL doesn't shrink it back down, and that's expected, not a bug.
You deleted gigabytes of files inside a WSL distro, but your Windows C: drive shows no space freed up at all. This is expected dynamic-VHD behavior, not a bug — and it has a specific, direct fix.
Training a machine learning model inside WSL2 using your actual GPU sounds like it shouldn't work through a virtual machine layer at all. Here's the specific virtualized GPU mechanism that makes it possible.
Docker Desktop configured to use the WSL2 backend suddenly can't see your distro, or containers fail to start with confusing errors. Here's how to work through the specific integration points that commonly break.
For years, software expecting systemd to be running as PID 1 simply didn't work correctly inside WSL. That changed in September 2022, closing one of WSL's longest-standing compatibility gaps.
For years, WSL distros ran without systemd — meaning services expecting it simply failed. Here's why that gap existed, and what changed architecturally to finally close it.
Installing Ubuntu via the Microsoft Store feels like installing any other app. Underneath, WSL distros are root filesystem tarballs registered with a small platform layer — and that model is what makes import/export and custom distros possible.
Commands that worked fine yesterday suddenly fail with permission errors after a WSL or Windows update. Here's how to work through the specific, common causes rather than reflexively reaching for chmod 777.
When Windows 11 shipped on October 5, 2021, Linux compatibility via WSL2 was no longer an optional add-on developers had to know to seek out — it was part of the platform's story from day one.
WSL2's lightweight VM claims memory dynamically as Linux processes need it — but historically gave that memory back to Windows only reluctantly. Here's what's actually happening, and what you control via .wslconfig.
A distro that hangs indefinitely on first launch, or refuses to start on a machine that's run WSL fine before, usually traces back to one of a handful of specific, diagnosable causes.
Running notepad.exe from a Bash prompt, or a Linux tool from Windows' own command line, works because of a specific interop layer translating between two completely different executable formats and process models.
A project that runs fine natively feels sluggish the moment it's accessed from /mnt/c inside WSL2 — especially anything touching large numbers of small files. Here's why, and the actual fix.
Microsoft announced GPU-accelerated compute support for WSL2 at Build 2020, followed by an NVIDIA CUDA preview that let machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow use a physical GPU from inside WSL2.
The system clock inside WSL2 falls behind Windows' own clock, especially noticeably after your laptop sleeps and resumes. Here's why the VM's clock actually drifts, and how to force it back in sync.
WSL2's original networking design put it behind its own virtual network, invisible to the rest of your LAN by default. Mirrored networking mode, added later, takes a fundamentally different approach — and each has real tradeoffs.
At Build 2019, Microsoft revealed WSL2 — not an incremental update, but an entirely different architecture running a genuine Linux kernel inside a purpose-built lightweight virtual machine.
Linux and Windows filesystems handle permissions, case sensitivity, and paths in fundamentally different ways. WSL's cross-OS file access works by translating between them at the protocol level — and that translation has real performance costs.
Ping works, but domain names won't resolve inside WSL2 — or the reverse. Here's how to actually diagnose whether the problem is DNS configuration, VPN interference, or the networking mode itself.
Task Manager shows vmmem consuming several gigabytes of RAM, even when you're not actively using WSL. Here's how to actually diagnose what's holding that memory, and how to cap it properly.
WSL2 doesn't borrow a distro's kernel — Microsoft maintains its own fork, patched specifically for the virtualized environment WSL2 runs in, and ships it independently of both Windows and any Linux distro's own kernel.
How WSL2 differs fundamentally from WSL1's syscall translation, running an actual Linux kernel in a lightweight, tightly-integrated VM.
First revealed via Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14316 on April 6, 2016, WSL let Windows run real Linux binaries for the first time.