- This is one of multiple videos in my WSL version two series. In this video, I'm gonna show
you some tips and tricks. I'm gonna show you, as an example, how to use the Microsoft Windows Terminal. You can open up multiple shells to various Linux operating systems running within WSL version two. I'll also show you some
additional tips and tricks in this video. So as an example, how to open Linux files
from within Windows, or how to access Windows
files from within Linux. Use the menu below this video if you want to jump to a specific topic. So if you're not interested
in the Windows Terminal, but you just want to see how to open Linux files within Windows, then use the menu to jump to that topic. Okay, so let's get started. (upbeat dance music) ♪ Yeah, let's go ♪ (upbeat dance music continues) - Microsoft have released
a Windows Terminal that makes it a lot easier to
work with multiple consoles. So I'm gonna go to the Microsoft store, and I'm gonna search for
the Windows Terminal. And here it is, so I'm
gonna click on that, and I'm gonna click get, and
then I'm gonna click install, to install the Windows
Terminal on my computer. It's not a very big installation. You can see it's about six meg. So quite a small installation. And I'm gonna click launch to
launch the Windows Terminal. What I've got here is
a Windows PowerShell. So if I type wsl-l-v, as an example, I can see that I've got an Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine running. I can see that the Docker
Desktop is running. I can see that 18.04 is
stopped, as an example, and Ubuntu has stopped. But notice here, I can click
on this little down arrow, and I can open a command prompt. This is the classic command prompt that's been around for many, many years. So as an example, IP config shows me the IP
address of my computer. So I've got PowerShell running here, I've got a command prompt running here, but what I can now do is start an Ubuntu 20.04 prompt. So, lsb_release -a shows me that I've got
Ubuntu 20.04 in this tab. Drop this down, let's start an 18.04 tab. So, lsb_release -a. I've got PowerShell. I've
got a command prompt. I've got an Ubuntu virtual machine, in this case, 20.04, running,
and I've got 18.04 running. And what I could do now, as an example, is go into my Docker WSL Integration, and I could enable Docker
on various virtual machines, including the 18.04 virtual machine. Click apply and restart,
to apply those changes. Go back into my Windows Terminal. In my 18.04 virtual machine, I could type, docker run hello-world. I'm told, "Hello from Docker!" Everything seems to be working right. What I can do now is use this command to run an Ubuntu shell. So, lsb_release -a. And that command doesn't work. So let's install this app
update to update my references. What I'm doing now is running, hopefully, a 20.04 Ubuntu within 18.04. So I'll install that software quickly. Clear the screen. So, lsb_release -a. Notice I'm running Ubuntu
20.04 within Docker. When I type exit, and
use that command again, notice I'm running Ubuntu 18.04. So in this example, I'm
running Ubuntu 20.04 in a Docker container, within
an 18.04 virtual machine, which is running within Windows. This is fantastic. I can even open an Azure Cloud Shell here, and log into Azure, log into my various virtual machines running within WSL version
two, open up a command prompt, open up PowerShell, et cetera. This is a fantastic
development from Microsoft. You can run a whole bunch of terminals, but you can also change the settings. So, if you click on the little down arrow and go to settings, you
can change the fonts, you can change a whole bunch of options within Windows Terminal. If you're interested, I'll create a separate
video on Windows Terminal. Let me know if you're
interested in me doing that. I'll show you how to change
a lot of the schema settings and a lot of the options here. But notice you can have
different profiles. One for Windows PowerShell, as an example, one for cmd, or the command prompt. One for the different virtual
machines that we're running within WSL version two, et cetera. So Windows Terminal is
fantastic, great application. But what I want to show you
now are some tips and tricks with regards to WSL version two. So this is not a Windows Terminal option. This is just part of WSL version two. So one of the options, and
let me go back to home, in this 20.04 LTS virtual machine, is I can access files in Windows from within Linux. So at the moment, pwd once again shows me that I'm in my home directory, but if I go cd root, notice
I'm in the root directory. If I go to mnt, ls, I can see the C drive. This is the C drive on
my Windows computer. So as an example, if I go to C drive, there are the files on
my C drive in Windows. So, back in my Ubuntu shell, I'll go, cd c, and type ls, and what you'll notice is
I have these files listed. Those are the files on my C drive. I'll use sudo here so that
I can use root privileges. So, sudo ls. Put my password in. Now, after I've put in my password, notice I can see all the
directories on my C drive. So those are the
directories on my C drive. And I could also do
something like, find grep, and let's just grep
for temp as an example. And notice I'm able to use
Linux commands on Windows. So I'll just stop that for a second. I'm getting permission denied,
'cause I need to use sudo. And let's simply search for devlist.txt. So, devlist.txt, to make it simpler. And, as you can see, it's
trying to find the files, but it has found the one file here. So scrolling up, notice
it did find devlist.txt in the root directory. Now in the same way that you can use Linux to look at the C drive, or other drives on a Windows computer, you can use Explorer to
explore the Linux directory. So I'll type explorer ., and I need to type exe . to run the Windows application. And what it's done now is
opened up Windows Explorer, and I'm looking at the WSL hard drive for Ubuntu 20.04. And what I can see here are the files on my Linux virtual machine. So, ls, as an example,
shows me those two files, xe.py and xe2.py. And I can see something
similar here in Explorer. And what I could do, as an
example, is open these files in Visual Studio Code, as an example. So I've opened xe.py
in Visual Studio Code. What I'll do is cat that file here, so that you can see what's in the file. Notice there are two print
statements at the end. So what I'll do is delete
the extra print statement, and go file, save, to save the file. And back in Linux, if I read that file, notice the second print
statement has been removed. I could say something
here like, print hello from Windows, and go file, save, to save the file. And if I cat that again, in Linux, notice, there's the changed file. So, basically, Explorer allows me to explore files on the Linux subsystem using a
familiar Windows application. What you can also do is use VS
Code to open files directly. So I can say, code.exe xe.py, to open that file. In this case, it's actually just code. So, code, and I'm gonna open xe.py. And what that does is
start VS Code in Windows, and it opens that file
directly from within Windows. So I'm opening a file
on the Linux subsystem from within Windows. And I did that directly, or you could just use Explorer to do that. So you might prefer using Explorer to view the Linux virtual
machine hard drive. So as you can see, there's
very tight integration between Linux and Windows, using the Windows subsystem
for Linux, so WSL version two. Fantastic options available now, if you use Windows as your
primary operating system, to develop on Linux, use Linux commands, learn Linux, et cetera. The Windows Terminal is also
a fantastic application. I'm really glad to see how
Microsoft have changed their ways and are using a lot of Linux technologies as part of Windows. Okay, so, very long video, but hopefully you've learned something. I'm David Bombal, and I want
to wish you all the very best. (upbeat dance music) ♪ Yeah, let's go ♪ (upbeat dance music continues)
