That was Frustrating
That was Frustrating
It took me more than a week to get the Windows Subsystem for Linux to actually work on my new PC. Grrrr, the downsides of a Gaming focused build
Not going to lie, one of the cool things that Microsoft has done in the latter part of the Windows 10 era was their release of the WSL solution. It allowed you to seamlessly have a full Linux distribution running side by side with Windows.
Why is this cool? Because there are somethings that Linux is just a LOT better at than Windows, and while PowerShell is wicked cool, it is still Windows.
The first time I enabled it, it was a bit tricky, but it was still almost beta level code. The second release made it fucking trivial to get it up, and hell, if you want to have a wonky special disty, it was possible.
Windows 11 made it even easier. You could do all the enablement and setup from the Windows Store app.
Thus, when I got my new system up and running, I tried to get it set up.
Failure.
Multiple times of failure.
Multiple uninstall/reinstall of the WSL components and the distribution (I choose Ubuntu. It is not the best, but it is about idiot proof for someone like me who knows just enough to be dangerous…)
Obscure error codes.
Googled (actually Binged - I rarely use Google to search these days because Fuck Google) it and it recommended some hinky incantations to type into an administrator enabled Powershell.
No dice.
Finally, an obscure reference mentioned to check the BIOS to ensure that virtualization support was enabled. I was credulous about that, because since 2009 or so, every computer and motherboard I have used had it enabled byu default.
Not this time. Apparently, for “gaming” there is a slight performance hit for the VM support in the chipset, and they just assume that most users want it disabled to get that 0.03% more oomph out of the package.
Rebooted, enabled it, rebooted again, and voila, Linux works (and presumably, I could also install VM Box and run other images).
That was way harder than it should have been. By a LOT.
Sigh.