First and foremost, huge thanks to Yuichiro Nakahira and Nicole Mikunda for proof-reading and test-running this guide! 🤩
Welcome to my guide on Home Computing at CSE using WSL2!
Here you will learn how to create and work seamlessly on a Linux environment without having to deal with the pain and suffering that is VLAB or SSH!
If you are currently a COMP1511 student, I would advise sticking to
VLABorSSHfor the first few weeks, and then seeking advice from your tutor on creating a local setup.
You have probably used TigerVNC or SSH to connect to UNSW's CSE machines before, allowing you to edit your files or execute terminal commands on CSE servers.
However the TigerVNC/SSH experience is not exactly smooth, with issues such as timeouts, disk quota limits, port numbers being stolen, or general unresponsiveness just to name a few. (Also the fact that you need a stable internet connection to connect to CSE in the first place).
This guide will demonstrate how to create and configure a seamless local setup whilst still being able to use a lot of the Linux commands and scripts that are taught in the majority of CSE courses,
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) can be used to run a wide variety of Linux software, including shells, text editors, and programming languages, on a Windows machine.
It is useful for developers who want to run Linux tools on their Windows machine, but prefer the convenience of a Windows environment.
This is my first attempt at writing a technical guide 😅 If there is anything I can improve on, or anything that is unclear/confusing, please don't hesistate to reach out to me at william.huynh3@unsw.edu.au! Thanks! :D