A Productive Linux Development Environment on Windows with WSL, Docker, tmux, VSCode and More

[@NickJanetakis]

Here's the timestamps: 1:08 -- Why use Windows? 1:44 -- Terminal set up (Ubuntu 18.04 WSL / tmux) 4:09 -- Dealing with Windows updates and restoring terminal sessions 5:38 -- The tools I use blog post 6:22 -- Virtual desktops 7:28 -- Reverse searching your terminal history 7:47 -- Dotfiles link on GitHub 7:57 -- Visual Studio Code 9:26 -- Splitting and resizing windows 10:13 -- Modifying a web app workflow 13:19 -- Multiple clipboards with Ditto 14:37 -- Searching and launching apps with Keypirinha 15:19 -- Browser and screen sharing tools 16:47 -- Chatting on IRC with HexChat 17:26 -- Managing passwords on the command line with pass 17:55 -- Finance tracking with GnuCash 18:26 -- Various hardware I use 18:58 -- Recap of everything The description also has links to blog posts which shows how to configure everything.

[@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279]

i'm newbie at using wsl, i saw that you wrote the comand "code . " in the bash and that open vs code, but when i do it, it does work. why? and thanks for the help :D

[@dexterman6361]

Windows now has clipboard history, you can hit Win+C/Win+V to open it up (1809 version)

[@francoleiva2320]

This is very very amazing my friend! Thanks, really

[@NickJanetakis]

@@dexterman6361 Yep, but it doesn't have search history and it lacks a bunch of options that Ditto has that I use often.

[@Jianju69]

Can I offer some feedback? You constantly say, "So, I just hit a hotkey, or whatever..." WHAT hotkey? How about, "Ctrl-B & double-quote"? It's aggravating when one must stop the video and do a google search to understand what you're talking about.

[@binyamindarshanhcohen4359]

I haven't use windows in a long time and don't really intent to, but this video is just well put and nicely done, so I watched it all the way through :) Kudos for that!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem, thanks for watching.

[@yash1152]

yeah, dont come back to windows. i dont want windows user base to grow (or say, i dont want linux user base to shrink)

[@jamesyoo67]

Hey Nick, as a life-long Windows/.Net developer who's just getting into WSL/Ubuntu/Docker (thanks to .Net Core!)...I seriously can't thank you enough for this video. I installed almost everything you listed on here. Tmux is going to take some time to practice. I already love Keypirinha.

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. I have a few videos on my tmux workflow btw. You might like this one as it focuses on the concept of using sessions, windows and splits to get work done: kzbin.info/www/bejne/npPWaKerrNWakKM

[@PhanorColl]

I'm a heavy linux user, as a developer is my main OS, but now I'm diving into digital art and I'm considering moving to windows, this really help me clear a couple of things about a dev setup, the last time I used windows as with XP jajaja, so its been a long time, and I see that it has changed a lot, the other thing that keeps poping up in my mind is the virus landscape.

[@ryanharris8396]

Great video, this is exactly what I was looking for. With a few minor exceptions (launchy vs keypirinha, Win10 1809 clipboard manager vs ditto, etc...) I'll be copying this setup. You and I seem to have been on the same journey with development environments. I forgot how awesome tmux was, thanks for the reminder!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. Glad to see you're on your way with the new set up.

[@ArtiomNeganov]

I own a laptop which has been laying in vain for about 1.5 years. It had Windows 10 installed by default and I'd shrunk it to setup Linux as a secondary OS. But since Linux video drivers for its Intel cards turned to be very too glitchy and I couldn't use it at all. Now I see that I could build a dev env on Windows long ago. Didn't know about WSL before but now it's running on my laptop! Thanks a lot, Nick!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. I'm glad you're getting use out of your laptop again.

[@KernelNinja_]

in Windows 10 1809 you don't need ditto any more, there is a feature in windows (Win + V)

[@NickJanetakis]

I still use Ditto because it has a way to search your history very quickly which is one of its most useful features to find a previously copied item. Maybe Microsoft's built in multi-clipboard feature will get better over time but currently I'm sticking with Ditto. There's also other really nice perks of Ditto such as being able to choose between formatted vs unformatted pasting which is really really useful.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@steves.9901 Welcome back. :D

[@leeroyescu]

@@NickJanetakis I use ClipX it's much better, tried to switch to others because it's abandonware, tried Ditto too, came back to ClipX. Biggest con is Search and Manage are two different windows instead of being joined. An improved alternative is needed, that joins text expansion with clipboard history. I dream of something based on text editors, to take advantage of their pre-built powerful functionality for free.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@leeroyescu With Ditto you can search and pick your items from 1 window by the way. If you want an app that does text expansion and has a clipboard history you might want to look at www.phraseexpress.com/. I tried it for a bit. If you're hardcore into text expansion, it's solid. I don't use it that much tho.

[@AliciaSykes]

4:12 is my fave part - o oh spaghetti o, I'm deffo gonna use that phrase next time I delete all my uncommitted changes!

[@NickJanetakis]

That phrase was made for such an occasion. I hope you never get to use it!

[@miteshshah918]

Thanks a lot for showcasing the workflow. Really appreciate how you've explained all the different components more from an "opinions" pov instead of a "technical" pov. I also have a very similar setup and learnt a lot of cool stuff! :)

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem, thanks for watching.

[@SwapnilPhulse]

Awesome video!! I noticed that the set up of how you got here is fragmented over the course of multiple blogposts. It would be an amazing if you create one video where you actually set up this environment ie install applications freshly & configure them in sequence. As if you were doing it on a new machine with Windows 10. It would be great value add. And people would be able to follow this video along nicely after they have this same setup. Thanks again!

[@NickJanetakis]

Thanks for the suggestions. With WSL2 coming out in a month or so with the next stable release of Windows, I will be making a 2020 edition of this video. That would be a good time to do something like that.

[@SwapnilPhulse]

Nick Janetakis Appreciate it, Nick! Also I noticed WSL2 is architected a bit differently as noted here. Maybe you’ve already checked it out, but thought this was worth sharing. www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/wsl-2-general-availability/

[@NickJanetakis]

@@SwapnilPhulse Yep. I'm likely going to keep my WSL1 instance installed and then install WSL2 separately just in case it doesn't work as well as WSL1.

[@FredyGuibert]

Bro, your channel is awesome! Thank you so much for sharing all the great experience you have!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem, thanks for sticking around. Lots more videos are on their way, including a 2020 edition of this set up but I'm waiting for WSL2 to become available on the stable channel first.

[@FredyGuibert]

@@NickJanetakis me too! one of the best features will be having the data on .vhd with a real linux file system which makes things faster!

[@busyrand]

Dope setup! This is giving me solid ideas for future setups if I get a more powerful work station computer to use for editing videos and photography. I'm leaning towards a Linux/Windows 10 dual boot setup for my development environment after recently having such a difficult time getting up and running with a Vagrant and other things that are straight forward with POSIX setups. This is great though. You cleared up a handful of questions I had about use cases but didn't know how to ask the questions.

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. Good luck with your setup!

[@mistriela]

Thanks you for that video - it helped me bootstrap the WSL environment along with Docker !

[@ngjerome5490]

For a snappier experience, you may want to turn off animations in Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Show animations in Windows > off.

[@NickJanetakis]

Nice one. I just turned it off and I do prefer it without animations.

[@MauricioRobayo]

Please try code-server to run vscode directly from WSL using the programs installed there (git, node, etc). I think is a great setup, no need to run vscode from Windows.

[@AlexanderSuraphel]

Is it fast?

[@MauricioRobayo]

@@AlexanderSuraphel I haven't noticed any significant delay vs using it directly from windows.

[@MathieuBosi]

Many thanks for sharing your tools and experience. Personally, to search + launch programs in Windows 10, I use Win + S.

[@yash1152]

15:02 umh, it doesnt need any external application. i just do win > fire > enter, and it will launch firefox too - by default in windows 10. did you try that???

[@NickJanetakis]

I've tried it, the built in search bar loads in the very bottom left of your monitor. It's very far away from mid-screen if you have a high resolution monitor.

[@yash1152]

@@NickJanetakis yeah, the positioning can be indeed a problem i agree

[@AgrabATC]

Please I just want to know, is having bash for windows not enough? I'm new to all of this, but I've been told that using wsl and ubuntu is like having a double os since the home directory is not the same, I know you can always cd into your windows home directory, but why don't you use bash for windows which stays on windows with the same commands available on wsl? Thank you

[@scicommerce]

Liked, base stuff but very very useful for devs who thinking to switch from mac to windows!

[@AMian-yf2hn]

Good. Read your blogs re: hyper and previous choices last night and got this video in my feed ! Time to update for wsl2, x410 and Pengwin pro/cons including remote access for Windows and Linux VPS/Clouds 😛

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. I just did a video on wsltty (the terminal I use now) last week (kzbin.info/www/bejne/joSXm2CMiJh0qsk) which also mentions as a side topic on why I won't be using wsl2 until it hits Windows stable in Spring 2020+. It's mainly because the insiders release of Windows requires sending too much telemetry information to Microsoft.

[@OpletalRobin]

I was feeling pretty iffy about windows for web development but I still needed it for other stuff. This helped me a lot to worry less. I use a desktop with the windows and a Linux notebook and it's looking like I will be able to use both basically the same way! :) Thanks!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. My Windows desktop is my main workstation, but I also modified a Chromebook to run native Linux. Both boxes share the same dotfiles and I even use Ansible to set up both of them the same way. It works great.

[@OpletalRobin]

That's absolutely awesome... Thanks!

[@yash1152]

6:31 ahhw, nice, didnt know about that keyb shortcut (^ Win + arrow) to change the workspaces in win 10. i knew win + tab , but it doesnt really work. do you know how to create new workspace/virtual desktop or delete/close existing one?? i have set up 4 finger swipe gesture for that - which works when i am on touchpad, but it still felt hurdle when doing keyb work. this keyb shortcut will help me a lot. thanks for it (:

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. You can use Win + CTRL + D to make a new virtual desktop and Win + CTRL + F4 to close the current desktop.

[@yash1152]

@@NickJanetakis wowwww, it works. awesome. thanks for sharing

[@baz_sh]

Nice video, some real nuggets in this-thank you for making it :)

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem, thanks for watching.

[@dalerrahimov5989]

I have almost the same setup besides docker I just use virtualenv for python inside WSL since I'm mainly doing python lately. One more think that I use is ConEmu so I don't have to switch back and forth with Power-shell just have everything in one place.

[@mikeg3660]

A wealth of information.... thanks very much Nick!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem!

[@AdityaSingh-hu1zb]

Feature same as ditto is natively supported in Windows 1809 onwards. Just turn it on in Settings->System->clipboard.

[@NickJanetakis]

It's close but not the same. Ditto lets you search your history and has a few other useful features like differentiating plain text vs formatted pastes.

[@AdityaSingh-hu1zb]

@@NickJanetakis Thanks man, actually I have never used ditto, will surely give it a try. Your videos are great. Keep it up.

[@jeremyforrest1997]

You can change a setting in VS Code that saves your file on focus change.

[@BloodnutXcom]

Keypirinha is a word play on Caipirinha which is a cocktail. pronounced "kapirinya"

[@chyldstudios]

I tried running Ubuntu and Linux Mint on VMware on Windows 10... but just too slow. But looks like I could just use WSL instead. Thanks for the video.

[@rban123]

You have to give your VM enough resources if you want it to be fast. I run Ubuntu headless on windows 10 and installed my own desktop environment and windows manger. I have the VM 8 gigs of memory and 4 cpu cores and it is lightning fast for all of my development needs

[@JosueRodriguez08]

@@rban123 do you realize that 8 gigs and 4 cores total is still the whole pc of some people?

[@rban123]

Josue Rodriguez if you’re host PC has a 4-core cpu , you can give the VM all 4 cores. Most people don’t realize this and it greatly improves your VMs speed.

[@adhamhisham978]

Your wallpaper is so cool🤩🤩

[@NickJanetakis]

Thanks, I linked to it in one of the comments. It's at imgur.com/a/S60ZAf2.

[@repomanouss6261]

Windows 10 now supports multiple clipboards, you can use it with the shortcut win+v

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, but it doesn't include searching your clipboard history or being able to toggle formatted vs unformatted pastes. Both of which are things I do a lot with Ditto.

[@grainfrizz]

I remember Greg, a buddy of mine who's so into _tmux_

[@victorianFella]

Nginx is not working correctly in the docker container and the networking in general is still quite limited under WSL unfortunately.

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, and that's why I use Docker for Windows. WSL is not running Docker natively in this video's set up. WSL is really only being configured to talk to the Docker daemon running within Docker for Windows (where networking does work, so nginx and anything else you would expect to work will work). Check out the configuring Docker with WSL blog post in the description for more details: nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly

[@BlasterKat101]

Thanks a lot! I've been wanting to learn how to set up WSL and find a good workflow with which to develop on nodejs and friends. I learned MERN stack using a Ubuntu machine (with Oh My Zsh!, Terminator, VSCode and Postman for API testing), but since that computer is old and dying now, I'm switching to the Surface that I was using for design work. I was a bit scared at first, but these resources are super useful to get up and going.

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. Good luck!

[@jayhu6075]

Great presentation. Hopely more...Many thx

[@vodoo6665]

VSCode + Wsl = Dope

[@foxiego1251]

Great video, thanks for tmux.conf file, makes it even better

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem.

[@yash1152]

heyy, you'd be glad to know that i just found this video inside the article: since youtube doesn't allow pasting links for some reason, i am writing it as below: domain: frameboxxindore (company) subfolder: linux file: how do i install tmux on windows 10 separater in file name: hyphen or dash extension: html

[@sc0or]

xfce4 works fine with WSL (except browser engines) and Xlaunch (of course simple programs like a terminal can be opened in XLaunch even without window manager). So, you can open as many terminals as you need right in xfce or in Win. All the vid is about how to split a terminal and reload a browser. A Ruby guy )))

[@gabriel1991]

How can integrae WLS terminal into VsCode? Some commands like python and pip work on command prompt but they don't on WLS terminal...

[@NickJanetakis]

You can configure VSCode to use the WSL terminal. Add this to your VSCode settings: "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\wsl.exe", "terminal.external.windowsExec": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\wsl.exe",

[@gabriel1991]

@@NickJanetakis Thanks! However i am having another issue, when a type the command pip to install some python library on the terminal, it isn't recognized. This command works properly on cmd.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@gabriel1991 I don't know what your set up is like. Maybe you need to enable your virtual environment, and you'll also need to install your Python packages inside of WSL.

[@hexchad765]

Like your info and pace. Hyper can do panes and can look even better, IMHO

[@praneethmendu1]

looks sexy but feels laggy af

[@NickJanetakis]

Hyper has tons of input lag and its split panes are extremely buggy. I have a full write up about a few terminals at nickjanetakis.com/blog/conemu-vs-hyper-vs-terminus-vs-mobaxterm-terminator-vs-ubuntu-wsl.

[@udubnate]

What tool did you use at 5:35? Looks like a quick way to launch apps in Windows?

[@NickJanetakis]

That is Keypirinha. It is covered again at 14:37 and yes, it is a fuzzy finder to launch apps and open folders in Windows.

[@alirezanet]

You don't need ditto for clipboard. just use WINKEY + V instead of CTRL + V on windows if you have the latest updates

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, but the Windows built in multi-clipboard lacks a number of useful features. Ditto allows you to search through the clipboard history and also paste both formatted and un-formatted text. Both of those are killer features and the Windows clipboard doesn't let you do that.

[@frankfu1122]

What is the Windows program you used to open Firefox in 5:34? Thanks for the video by the way.

[@NickJanetakis]

That is Keypirinha and it's mentioned at 14:37

[@epiphoney]

How about WSL 2 and Windows Terminal Preview and Powershell 7 Preview 5?

[@NickJanetakis]

I made a follow up video about my terminal of choice (which I would still use and still do use today) and it also talks about why I don't use WSL 2 since it's not available on the stable release of Windows, but I will be switching to it when it hits stable. That video is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/joSXm2CMiJh0qsk

[@ripnlip33]

Thanks for the video. What is the video editing app that you mentioned did not run on Linux?

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. It's called Camtasia. It only runs on Windows and MacOS. I tried talking to them about Linux support but they said it's not happening because the community demand isn't high enough relative to Windows and MacOS.

[@Dima-qz4su]

you can also get auto reload page extention for browser

[@leowgl1472]

Nice video. What hardware you are using for Windows? I like Windows OS than Mac OS, but I don't know which windows laptop is good enough.

[@NickJanetakis]

Thanks. I am using a desktop where I assembled it from parts. A full list can be found here: nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use#computer-desk-and-phone. I don't know of any laptops off hand or what type of work you'll be doing, but if you look at the specs of the hardware listed in that post I'm sure you can find an equivalent (and even better if needed) laptop.

[@artaway6647]

Hey, what I'm still don't understand is, should I install the tool on WSL or Windows? For example Python, IDK if I should install it on WSL or Windows, also Java, Git, etc. Also I don't know how to "integrate" it to WSL. Does VSCode WSL Python/Java plugin works if I instal it from WSL? or should I install it on Windows?

[@NickJanetakis]

I would install all of those things in WSL. VSCode has really good support for finding things that are installed in WSL.

[@artaway6647]

@@NickJanetakis thanks for the quick response. Yeah, I thought so, with VSCode remote extension anything's possible. But isn't that mean I fan't develop GUI app? Also, basically literally everything is on wsl? Even npm and stuff?

[@NickJanetakis]

@@artaway6647 Yeah, you can even use remote containers and have it connect to a Docker container. You can develop GUI apps. If you use an X-server you can allow WSL to popup GUI apps in their own window. Yeah npm and basically everything else you would use for your dev environment would go in WSL.

[@Yggdrasil42]

Have you seen the awesome new Remote extensions for vscode? They've built a really cool WSL, Docker and SSH integration, that improves over manually integrating those tools.

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, looks really cool. I've been waiting for a feature like that for over a year. Also looking forward to WSL v2 with native Docker support, but that likely won't hit the stable version of Windows until well after June (maybe Fall 2019 or Spring 2020 depending on what they want to do).

[@djd34d14]

So why not just hit super then start typing? Don't need the mouse for windows menu. Is that keypirinha just better at finding the right thing?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, it's better at finding certain things, loads in the middle of the screen (easier to see with a high resolution) and lets you fuzzy find directories instead of just programs. In a similar fashion, that's why I use Ditto instead of Windows' built in multi-clipboard too. It offers a better experience (searching through the history and being able to toggle pasting with and without formatting).

[@djd34d14]

@@NickJanetakis the clipboard I could see but I'd never seen a need for a 3rd party launcher. It looks cool though.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@djd34d14 Yeah. I use the custom launcher most of the time but the built in Win key + S is still quite useful for searching for specific Windows features / options. I use them both but most of the time I'm using Keypirinha.

[@yash1152]

my question is, is tmux installed on the wsl's distro, or does it install on windows?? (sorry, new to wsl and linux)

[@TuanNguyen-ef9lt]

What is the background ?? Tks

[@NickJanetakis]

It's imgur.com/a/S60ZAf2.

[@bluesdog88]

Hey have you ever tied DaVinci resolve? I'm no video expert but it seems quite robust and they have a free and a paid version

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, it's a really good editor in an editing sense but I can't export mp4s with it. It adds audio distortions and weird video artifacts (little black blocks) consistently in videos where I switch between white and dark backgrounds quickly. I wish I could use it, but I can't due to that.

[@bluesdog88]

@@NickJanetakis bugger! it looks pretty cool

[@NickJanetakis]

@@bluesdog88 Yeah, I actually use it to edit my podcasts (wave files not mp4s) and it's great. The editing experience is very good. I wish it worked with my hardware otherwise it would be a solved problem.

[@chris-ew9wl]

@Nick is that mouse support? You are clicking each Tmux pane via mouse? If so, how'd you enable it?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, yep there's full mouse support in tmux. My entire tmux config is available here: github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf , the main option to get mouse support is: set -g mouse on

[@StephenConnolly67]

Nick, have you ever found a solution to have pretty URLs when developing with Docker? i.e. site.test instead of localhost::8000. I run multiple development environments using Docker and have yet to find a good solution.

[@ml_serenity]

Create an alias in your hosts file.

[@StephenConnolly67]

@@ml_serenity but IP will change every time container spins up. Then I'd have to change the hosts file each time. Is there a way to assign static IP to container for local development?

[@ml_serenity]

@@StephenConnolly67 wait internal container IP should be mapped to the port on your localhost, so IP should be the same all the time (localhost), just different containers will have different ports...

[@Hugo280603]

Amazing, I'm trying to move from Mac to windows, mostly because I built a custom computer, and I've been struggling with setting my DEV environment. Thanks for the video, I'm sure it will be helpful for me. Btw which app are you using to open the search bar similar to spotlight

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. The app launcher is "Keypirinha ", which is covered in more detail at 14:37.

[@jameshagooddesigndevelopme7819]

Does anyone else have a hard time getting anything to hot reload inside of wsl2? I cant get anything to reload from nextjs to just parcel or webpack with webpack dev server. It works fine in docker but outside of docker not worth a crap

[@NickJanetakis]

It is working here. The inotify events should pass through using WSL 2 and Docker Desktop 2.2+. Are you using volumes?

[@RamkrishanYT]

I currently use wsl for a ML library called Graphlab. The problem I face is that it can't access any hardware like camera so I can't test some of the things like real time image processing

[@NickJanetakis]

Hopefully one day we'll have access to real devices. Supposedly it's in the works and progress is being made: wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-windows-subsystem-for-l/suggestions/13396686-access-to-real-linux-devices-in-dev

[@Morax]

Do you still use Tmux or have you switched to Windows Terminal?

[@Morax]

Never mind, just looked at your website :)

[@NickJanetakis]

@@Morax I still use tmux, along with the new microsoft terminal. I made an updated 2020 edition of this video yesterday at kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5W6XpSkbp6Hd68 btw.

[@ertwro]

Also used Dexpot but now I use bug.n (is like having dwm inside windows) and love it! Never tried Vscode. Oh, I have something even better than keypirinha (kae-pee-ri-nya / it's a play on words with a Brazilian cocktail ) I use FARR (find and run robot) WAAY more extensible, it also accepts stdin/stdout like dmenu in Linux. At the moment my problem is that Windows defender sometimes has problems with gpg and I've seen some BSOD which is not nice at all.

[@NickJanetakis]

Thanks for the reply. I checked out bug.n once before (maybe 4-5 months ago) but it felt kind of buggy. I will give it another go because I would love to use a tiled wm on Windows. I run i3 on my Linux laptop (I know dwm is different but hey some type of tiled wm is better than nothing!). Never heard of FARR. Beyond accepting input and output what makes it better than keypirinha? You may also want to disable defender btw, that's what I do. It causes all sorts of performance issues in WSL.

[@ertwro]

@@NickJanetakis Oh, several advantages. FARR's main advantage is "aliases" to create menus & personalized shortcuts. It has several extensions for tabs, processes, multimonitor, variables, integration with everything for fast file search, etc. Yeah, bug.n has issues but is the best thing I've found by far. (I've thought of making a tutorial because many things can be solved with a little AHK), especially since you can use it as a keyboard daemon and integrate it with WSL e.g. I use MPD as my music player and control it with. bug.n system wide. Yeah, I've thought about disabling defender but is an extra security risk. All I do for now is create exceptions for files and processes which works great 99% of the time.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@ertwro Cool, I'll check it out. If you ever make a bug.n tutorial please post it here. I'm sure a lot of people would be really interested in that. I know I would be.

[@ertwro]

@@NickJanetakis I plan on making a couple videos on Bug.n. Here's the first one. Is just the introduction. I will go over configuring it from scratch (rules, regex autohotkey, custom layouts, keyboard daemon, etc). kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHacpIGFmM5og7s

[@muellerhans]

Were you influenced by Epos Vox or why do you say that there are no good video editing tools for gnu/linux?

[@NickJanetakis]

I never heard of Epos Vox. I personally tried all of the popular editors and came to that conclusion based on experience. Of course just because I say it doesn't mean everyone will agree, but for the videos I make (typical screencasts) none of them approached Camtasia for being able to churn out decently edited videos quickly. I'm basing this on having created and edited hundreds of screencast style videos over the last 3.5 years.

[@muellerhans]

@@NickJanetakisOk.I asked because that there was a comment from that guy on the 29th of october and a reaction to that from a youtuber named the linux gamer a few days later in november. I know a german linux youtuber that uses shotcut and renders 4k footage so at least the people were wrong about it not being possible but dunno about the practical part compared to camtasia tbh.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@muellerhans There's multiple types of video editing. The videos I make are typically screencasts and tutorial style videos where I record my desktop and maybe a web cam, and then put in text overlays, zooms / pans, highlights, object animations and things like that. That is much different than editing live video footage. There might be good alternatives on Linux for live video, but that's not my expertise.

[@vanewebsite6205]

Hi there, i have a question, since window is already can directly run docker, then why we still run docker in wsl?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, Docker for Windows is still in control of running the Docker daemon. WSL is only being configured to connect to it. We basically only use the Docker CLI from WSL. It's nice because it means you can be working in WSL doing your day to day and seamlessly run Docker commands without having to open PowerShell.

[@ml_serenity]

Do you know Windows 10 has built-in clipboard ring? Win-V

[@NickJanetakis]

Yes, but it's not the same as Ditto. Here's a copy / paste from a previous comment: Also on the topic of Windows having a built in multi-clipboard (lots of comments about this too). I know, but Ditto allows you to search through the clipboard history and also paste both formatted and un-formatted text. Both of those are killer features and the Windows clipboard doesn't let you do that.

[@ml_serenity]

@@NickJanetakis that's interesting, thanks Nick

[@sarmadahsan869]

How to split terminal???? How you open VScode, you installed it in ubuntu also???

[@NickJanetakis]

I use tmux which lets you create terminal splits and windows. I made a video about that at kzbin.info/www/bejne/npPWaKerrNWakKM. VSCode is installed directly in Windows.

[@yash1152]

17:16 i was searching for a client application for IRC on windows, thanks for suggesting that 17:55 nice to see you using GNU cash

[@CTSSTC]

10:50 I use save on focus loss and I've never looked back, no more shenanigans like that where you forget to save :P I didn't know you could have VSCode load up files from WSL, I played with "Ubuntu on Windows" when it first came out and I remember if you touched the Linux file system directly from within Windows it would corrupt the whole Linux system and you'd have to reinstall it. So I think you had to set up a network share or some other silly shenanigans to get it to not corrupt. So now I'm wondering if it has changed or if there's some magical way VSCode handles it?

[@NickJanetakis]

I used to use that but some frameworks I use have a live-reload feature, so I never have to lose focus which made saving less predictable. I spaz spam CTRL+S a lot nowadays. As for WSL. There's no magic with VSCode and this would work with any editor and without having to do anything special. Those files I'm creating and working with are technically still a part of the Windows file system. They are not directly saved inside of WSL. They are located in a drive location that is on Windows and then it's mounted into WSL. This gives you the best of both worlds. You can modify them in Windows or through WSL directly (if you wanted to use terminal Vim in WSL), and you can also interact with them using grep, sed and other Unix tools from WSL. With that said, VSCode does have some WSL perks tho. It's pretty aware of WSL for a lot of its extensions, so you can configure linters to expect the lint tools to exist in WSL (such as linting Bash scripts with shellcheck or flake8 with Python, etc.). You can also configure it to spawn a WSL terminal if you like doing that with VSCode.

[@leeroyescu]

Everything's fine and dandy until you manually refresh the page. Can't you wire in some livereload? I can't speak for Python or Rails but under Node there's browser-sync or live-server. Just wanted to get the word out about this, it's really most excellent to have a snappy feedback loop in your development experience. (Ask Bret Victor)

[@NickJanetakis]

It depends on what I'm working with. With Jekyll, I have live reload set up without having to reload the browser manually. It is very handy for writing blog posts. I haven't bothered to set something like that up with Rails.

[@travislean4379]

what are hotkeys? is it hotkeys? can you plz tell me what keys are you talking about?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hotkeys are just keyboard shortcuts. Like hitting Win Key + E to open the file explorer.

[@calm_night]

Hi Nick! Does your tutorial about setting up docker on WSL fit for WSL2?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, yep it should still work since you're ultimately just connecting to Docker for Windows (Docker Desktop). Native WSL2 and Docker support is still not finalized yet. I made a video the other day about my wsltty (WSL terminal) set up and talked about why I'm not using WSL 2 today (about 40s in): kzbin.info/www/bejne/joSXm2CMiJh0qsk

[@calm_night]

Nick Janetakis thanks for the reply!

[@kommanderkeen]

Keypirinha is a joke with Caipirinha. A king of drink

[@eboniphillips8496]

Have you used this installation for app development ? Is there any info I could check ( as I listen to your video ) that will let me know if it's compatible with app development ?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, what type of app development are we talking about here? I've written many many many tens of thousands of lines of code for web applications with this set up.

[@eboniphillips8496]

This app will be needed for both iOS and Android. I haven’t chosen an app developer. Such as Python correct ( I’ve actually been having troubleshooting problems with installing the latest Python software to code-wait, uh, if I’m correct Python isn’t an development program, so I was told flutter ( but it’s pretty much new and not thoroughly tested. And then some I’ve been suggested have a subscription I’m not looking forward to paying right now. )

[@NickJanetakis]

@@eboniphillips8496 Ah, I'm not sure about native mobile app development. In that case, it would come down to if VSCode (the code editor) supports that. Everything else from this video would work fine since it's unrelated to coding. VSCode is a pretty good editor, I'm sure if you Google'd for "VSCode native app development" you'll find a bunch of things to look into.

[@eboniphillips8496]

Thanks, man ! Happy to show my appreciation and support by hitting subscribe !

[@marcelo.caetano]

What theme light in vscode? Sorry my english, im Brazilian

[@NickJanetakis]

It is the GitHub Plus Theme. You can find it here: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=thenikso.github-plus-theme

[@kardashevr]

I've got a question I can't find a workable answer to: How do I share environment variables between wsl and windows? I mean if I work in VSCode and use wsl as a terminal, how do I translate env variables created in wsl to vscode? Thanks in advance.

[@NickJanetakis]

Can you give an example of what you're trying to do?

[@kardashevr]

@@NickJanetakis in my app in vscode I use an api key and I want to use an env variable to hide it. How do I accomplish it using wsl?

[@NickJanetakis]

@@kardashevr That sounds like an application problem to me, not development environment. Most programming languages have a way to load in ENV variables. Typically you would have something like a .env file that gets loaded by your app and then all of its env variables are available. You can set env variables in WSL the same way as you can on Linux btw. You would just run: export API_KEY=abc123 and now any apps launched from your Bash session should have access to API_KEY.

[@karimdhrif6679]

Can the Docker setup with the docker-compose up be used on Linux?

[@NickJanetakis]

Yeah, in the same exact way with 0 modifications. You can take the same project and up on a native Linux distro.

[@RobertWildling]

Do you happen to know, which mountain the one on your desktop image is?

[@NickJanetakis]

Unfortunately no, but here's the 2560x1440 wallpaper: imgur.com/a/S60ZAf2

[@shibarmy2858]

What is the reason why use WSL instead of Git bash? Is there a big difference, cuz i am currently using gitbash and i think its the same if you just want to use linux commands

[@NickJanetakis]

Git bash is much different. It involves using specially compiled binaries that work with Windows. WSL is using the same exact binaries that run on a native system. In other words if you're running Ubuntu in WSL you can just apt install anything and expect it will work 99.99% of the time (not all features of the Linux kernel are available in WSL but most apps will run without issues).

[@shibarmy2858]

@@NickJanetakis , thanks for the reply. I am using git bash more on just file and docker manipulating, but most of my Linux commands are done inside the container, am I doing it right? or is it bad practice?

[@NickJanetakis]

@@shibarmy2858 It depends on what you're doing.

[@shibarmy2858]

Nick Janetakis I am doing web development.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@shibarmy2858 I run a lot of Linux commands outside of Docker because I'm interacting with the file system on my box. Like navigating, renaming and deleting files. That is just day to day activities. If your web app containers require running Linux commands inside the container that's fine and seems normal, such as starting your web server and running your tests.

[@minhnguyendinh7549]

Wondering that you install all WSL, Docker for windows,... on your C drive? My C drive is usually for the core windows file like Windows, and my C is a small solid state that's already filling up.

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, Yes I installed it on my C drive (I happen to have a 250GB SSD). You should be able to install it on a different drive if you wanted to. If not, you could consider installing it on your C drive initially, but then in the Hyper-V manager, change the location of the virtual hard disk to your non-SSD.

[@nageshkampati4514]

which commands you are using to split the screen

[@NickJanetakis]

The screen or the terminal? The screen is a built in feature of Windows. You can drag a window to the left and it'll snap and then let you pick a window to split with it. If you mean the terminal, that's built into tmux. I made a separate video on using tmux at kzbin.info/www/bejne/npPWaKerrNWakKM (it covers splits and windows, etc.).

[@rubenmartinez2807]

You running win pro or something? I got win home and just read you said wsl isnt an option for docker yet. What alternatives do ihave, besides the toolbox are there cloud or 3rd party options?

[@NickJanetakis]

I am running Win pro but I never said WSL isn't an option for Home edition. WSL will work with Home edition. The linked blog posts go over how to run Docker on Windows 10 Home without using the Toolbox, this way you can use WSL. Although it does involve having to create your own VM to run Docker (but this is all covered in the posts).

[@leonk6950]

If you'd like to try something different, try wox instead of keypirinha ! It does pretty much the same, but maybe a little better

[@andreikhrapavitski1398]

Hi, Nick! Thanks for the great video. I have had trouble running MongoDb on Docker for Windows. Did you run into any problems with MongoDb and, if so, could you share how you resolved them?

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, thanks. I don't use mongodb but I know of people using it successfully. What kind of issues are you having?

[@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279]

hi I'm newbie at using wsl, i saw that you wrote the comand "code . " in the bash and that open vs code, but when i do it, it does work. why? and thanks for the help :D

[@NickJanetakis]

Hi, what happens when you run it? Did you install code or code insiders? Also what happens if you run "code.exe" instead of "code"?

[@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279]

@@NickJanetakis when I try to run the comand "code" the output is: No command 'code' found, did you mean: Command 'cobe' from package 'python-cobe' (universe) Command 'node' from package 'nodejs-legacy' (universe) Command 'cdde' from package 'cdde' (universe) Command 'ode' from package 'plotutils' (universe) Command 'tcode' from package 'emboss' (universe) Command 'cde' from package 'cde' (universe) code: command not found when I try to run the comand "code.exe" the output is: code.exe: command not found I did not install neither code or code insiders, because I did not know those files (sorry for my ignorance) anyway I didn't know that i have to install something to make the comand "code" works as in the video 😅😅

[@NickJanetakis]

@@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279 Oh. Yeah you need to download VSCode from code.visualstudio.com/download (the Windows edition).

[@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279]

@@NickJanetakis ok I've install the windows edition of vscode (the user version) but stil from the wsl bash I can't use the "code" comand to open vscode

[@NickJanetakis]

@@personalcarlodomenicobaldi4279 I never messed with the user edition. If you run "code.exe" does that change anything? Where does it get installed to in Windows?

[@northshorepx]

Hi nick this was a great video that got me moving in WSL eariler in 2019. I wonder if you're planning to do an upgraded win the new WSL 2 and Windows terminal?

[@NickJanetakis]

I will for sure update to WSL v2 and the new terminal, but from what I read WSL 2 won't be available on Windows 10 stable until Spring 2020, and I will never install the insiders release of Windows to get it sooner due to how much telemetry data they collect to opt into insiders. I am looking forward to WSL 2 a lot though. The terminal doesn't excite me too much since wsltty + tmux has been working very nicely for the last ~6 months. It has super low input latency and opens almost instantly, and has keyboard shortcuts for clipboard management + zooming. But you can be sure that once I upgrade, I will be making videos on all of that stuff and I will upgrade the day it hits Windows stable.

[@Mr3maxmax3]

Hey, how do you manage to get git working on vscode with git only installed on wsl and not windows ?

[@NickJanetakis]

I used github.com/andy-5/wslgit. With that tool you won't need git installed on Windows. But keep in mind the performance isn't that great.

[@manifestasialam]

wow thats cool! how can i use that? 5:34

[@NickJanetakis]

That makes an appearance again with an explanation at 14:37.

[@manifestasialam]

@@NickJanetakis thx a lot. i don't like windows search because it's very heavy cpu in my laptop

[@TheNewton]

4:33 reminded me how furious windows makes me by making these absolutist decisions that ruin productivity. If i'm working in a shop and leave my tools on the table and the parts out in specific places I know it will be there unless the shop blows up or like windows someone somewhere sometime makes a stupid decision for me without asking me.

[@NickJanetakis]

Yep, it's my biggest complaint with Windows and now that Davinci Resolve 16 has come out (it wasn't out at the time of making this video) I do believe I can make it work for my video editing needs, so it won't be long before I run native Linux. I just want to get my next course out and done before I make that switch.

[@TheNewton]

​@@NickJanetakis what you pointed out about tmux is what 'salso nice about other modern software like sublime - crash resistance features, which makes em bandaids for windows update but you still have to reopen everything *after* you recall everything you were doing. Have you come across anything that saves the state of the current desktops open programs, or cli executions?

[@NickJanetakis]

@@TheNewton With tmux, the resurrect plugin gets all of your tmux related sessions, windows and panes set up after a reboot. It lets you easily save and restore it across reboots with a single hot key. You can combine using that with Vim sessions to make it quite easy to recover from a reboot (I've since moved from vscode to vim btw). I have not found a program that flawlessly opens and positions windows across reboots but I have not looked too hard for this since I spend 99% of my time in tmux / vim and I only run a few graphical apps (browsers, image editor, video editor, etc.).

[@LiegeMaximo]

1:08 i want to game. Have done dual booting ton of times, fed up of it...

[@Yggdrasil42]

Tmux is awesome but I think your example is flawed. If you're running it on your local machine (to tile multiple terminals across one monitor) and Windows decides to reboot you'll lose the Tmux session as well since the WSL subsystem reboots along with Windows.

[@NickJanetakis]

That scenario is covered in the video (4:58) and in my tmux configuration. Basically I use an extension called tmux-resurrect which lets you restore and save sessions with a key bind. It works really well, so even if a reboot happens and the tmux server dies, restoring it is a single key press since it's already been saved.

[@Blogueirinhagame]

Muito bom seu canal, super inscritas aqui para não perder nada ❤

[@LISBONKULT]

English? just maybe

[@aanthony2379]

great video, this is what ive been looking for

[@davidzwitser7181]

You can just hit the windows button and start typing. It'll also search through all your programs and files

[@NickJanetakis]

Thanks. This was covered in other comments. It's much a different search experience than Keypirinha. The TL;DR is it loads waaaaay in the bottom left corner instead of the middle of the screen (this makes a big difference at higher resolutions). Also you can't fuzzy search folder paths.

[@davidzwitser7181]

@@NickJanetakis Aah, in that case I see why you like it more. Thanks for the reply! Also, have you considered Davinci Resolve as a video editor on Linux. I personnally love Davinci Resolve but never tried it on Linux. It would solve issue of why you are forced to use windows. But maybe you have a good reason for that aswell.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@davidzwitser7181 Yep I tried Davinci, open shot, shotcut, blender and kdenlive. All of them are much much worse than Camtasia for creating screencast style videos (like this video). Camtasia makes it so easy to add good looking text overlays, tooltips, zoom / pans, animations and other useful effects. None of the Linux editors are comparable IMO. Davinci could be interesting to use as a "real" video editor, but it heavily lacks screencast editing friendly features.

[@dreidrei94]

Remember to exclude your password manager in Ditto or risk exposing them! Options > General > Exclude (KeePass.exe for me)

[@NickJanetakis]

Good call. Although for me that will be a little more tricky since I run a command line password manager called pass (which runs within WSL). I'd have to somehow exclude launching specifically that binary through my terminal, but still allow my terminal in general.

[@KangJangkrik]

What is Hi-Q? You've said that several times and I have no idea what's that

[@NickJanetakis]

Can you drop in a time stamp of when I said that?

[@KangJangkrik]

@@NickJanetakis it's on 2:54

[@NickJanetakis]

@@KangJangkrik Oh, I'm saying "hot keys". Keyboard shortcuts basically.

[@KangJangkrik]

@@NickJanetakis I expected (a key, maybe ALT) + Q 😅 Anyway, thanks for clearing up things. Your tutorial is really helpful :) +1 subscriber

[@midstofeternity]

I just finished installing both WSL and VSC but I still need to check as to why do I need it rather than virtualizing a Linux OS. Great video, thank you.

[@tasoulman]

Although I am not a fan of Windows, I must admit that using the WinKey and searching for applications works exactly as Keypirinha

[@NickJanetakis]

WinKey + S isn't quite the same. Keypirinha lets you fuzzy search directory paths so you can nearly instantly navigate to long paths, Windows search does not support that (and this makes a very big difference in the end). Also WinKey + S loads all the way on the bottom left and on a 2560x1440 display, that's a long ways to look down. I tried using Windows search for a long time before I found Keypirinha.

[@tasoulman]

@@NickJanetakis sounds legit. Will try that out. Thnx !!!

[@tasoulman]

@@NickJanetakis Does Keypirinha only search on c:\ ? cannot figure out how to set it up so it would search all my hard drives .

[@NickJanetakis]

@@tasoulman It can search other drives. For example if you type e:\ , it will start expanding folders on your E drive.

[@tasoulman]

@@NickJanetakis i didn't find a reference in the dics. Sorry for bothering you. Can i add this setting in the config ?

[@tasoulman]

why are U using docker 4 windows instead of docker inside wsl ?

[@NickJanetakis]

The Docker daemon doesn't fully run inside of WSL yet, but maybe one day. As of right now there's components of the Linux kernel that's not supported yet in WSL such as iptables, and network support is really important if you plan to have 2 containers talk to each other. In the mean time configuring the Docker CLI from WSL to use Docker for Windows works great.

[@tasoulman]

@@NickJanetakis didn't that. So you use wsl only as a terminal to talk to the docker daemon and not as a complete dev env ? I thought we could use wsl with docker. Bammer. So docker 4 windows it is I guess...

[@NickJanetakis]

@@tasoulman I spend all my time in the WSL terminal and it is my complete dev env (all of my dotfiles are there, some Linux tools, etc.). The Docker CLI is installed there which talks to the Docker daemon in Docker for Windows, but that means it feels like Docker is running in WSL from your point of view. Everything works seamlessly and I never have to leave the WSL terminal to work with or without Docker. I only launch the Docker for Windows settings when I'm upgrading Docker versions.

[@tasoulman]

@@NickJanetakis thnx for the feedback Nick. Will try that out !!!

[@yud2006yud]

Try Davinci Resolve for linux ;) Other than that- great video!!! Thanks!

[@NickJanetakis]

No problem. Thanks, I did use resolve. Check my massive comment where I talk about that in more detail. The TL;DR is I'm focused on editing screencast videos but resolve is focused on editing real film. Resolve is missing a lot of features that Camtasia has when it comes to quickly being able to make decent looking screencasts.

[@yud2006yud]

​@@NickJanetakis Resolve is just for the editing part - (the new version has the Edit page which makes it better for simpler things) for screen casting I use OBS - which allows to have scenes what makes it really nice. But your workflow is your workflow :) - if it ain't brokem... ;)

[@NickJanetakis]

@@yud2006yud Yes, that's the issue. Resolve's editing capabilities are fantastic and super powerful but it's much more cumbersome to do basic things like you can do in Camtasia in a few seconds. I use OBS sometimes for recording (the video we're commenting on was recorded with OBS) but little screencasts like this didn't require much editing. Usually I add a lot more overlays / text / zooming and panning in post for my course videos where I leverage Camtasia to the max. OBS scenes don't help with that stuff either.

[@JosueRodriguez08]

What about installing Linux?

[@NickJanetakis]

Check out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5jYaaqNjZiCmJY&lc=Ugz81AK7eCpVrBvEPBF4AaABAg

[@tiberiusvetus9113]

What keeps you from switching to Linux entirely?

[@NickJanetakis]

Mainly screencast video editing tools and certain games that don't run in WINE. But lately I've been looking into doing a GPU passthrough based VM which might solve those problems by letting me run Windows in a VM at native performance.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@zodiepupper Thanks. I mostly do screencast style videos (like this one). I tried kdenlive, and it's not even in the same galaxy as Camtasia when it comes to screencast editing (recording with Camtasia is nice too because it has its own recorder, without needing to use a tool like OBS). Basically it's a very streamlined app for recording + editing screencasts.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@zodiepupper Its editing functionality for screencasts is fantastic. It's so fast, and so easy to do really useful edits (zooming, tooltips, overlays, basic animations). For example this video was made in Camtasia (including the intro) kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpa2dWRtjrecoM0. It took literally 5 minutes to make the intro once I knew what I wanted. It also supports your webcam as a separate stream too.

[@NickJanetakis]

Check out this other tutorial on Camtasia behaviors kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2GXeouXaKtnga8. That's basically how I made the intro and most of the animations. It's just picking a few things from a list and dragging around a couple of sliders, and you're done.

[@NickJanetakis]

@@zodiepupper The interesting thing is Camtasia runs on Windows and MacOS, but they have no intent on supporting Linux (I asked). Hopefully Proton works out (first time I heard of it). There's also potentially doing a GPU passthrough Windows VM but that starts to get really hardcore.