Jeroen Wellner

Mobile & Web Development

Moving from OSX to Windows 10 with WSL

April 29, 2017

My Macbook Pro 13" has a screen coating issue and I have to get it replaced at a service center. I need a laptop for work. So I took this as an opportunity to check out alternatives for my Mac.

I have been a Mac user for the past ~10 years. I love the Mac for development. But with the latest disappointing Macbook updates I started to look around.

Windows 10 has improved tremendously (I have worked with Windows 10 at clients). Last year Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Bash on Windows runs Ubuntu user-mode binaries provided by Canonical. This means the command-line utilities are the same as those that run within a native Ubuntu environment.

The Windows 10 Creators Update seems to resolve a lot of issues I might have as a developer. So I think the time is ripe to give it a try!

Currently I mainly do front-end development and use nodejs. On my Mac I already switched from Webstorm to Vscode. I also do some PHP development which shouldn't be an issue with all available Ubuntu packages.

So yesterday I ordered the Asus Zenbook BX410UA, received it today and currently setting it up as my main development machine for next week. Lets see if it works out! Below is my installation log for future references.

Setup

Update Windows 10

Update Windows 10 with all the latest update. And make sure you get the Window 10 Creators Update (version 1703). I needed to download the Update Assistant to get it installed.

Turn on Developer mode

  • Go to Settings -> Update and Security -> For Developers
  • Select the Developer mode radio button.

Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux

  • From start search for turn windows features on or off
  • Select Windows Subsystem for Linux (beta)
  • Restart your computer when prompted

Run bash on Windows

  • From start search for bash
  • Follow the instructions on screen

It's working! We have a linux shell on windows!

Now setup my DEV enviroment.

Vscode + Bash

  • Go to File -> Preferences -> Settings
  • Add the following to user settings:
{
    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\bash.exe"
}

NodeJS

Install NodeJS :

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

And install build tools:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

Yarn

Install Yarn:

curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list

Git

Install git

sudo apt-get install git

Also installed this great bash git prompt.