Windows development setup with WSL2, ZSH, VSCode, and more

Windows development setup with WSL2, ZSH, VSCode Walkthrough! I'll show you which tools I'm using in my development setup for DevOps, Security research, and programming. We also cover how to customize your Linux Shell and other productive tools when working with the Windows Subsystem for Linux. #Windows #WSL2 #WindowsTerminal
Install WSL2: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...
Nerd Fonts: www.nerdfonts.com/
My GitHub Dotfiles: github.com/christianlempa/dot...
Powerlevel10k: github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k
Yadm: yadm.io
Follow me:
TWITTER: / christianlempa
INSTAGRAM: / christianlempa
DISCORD: / discord
GITHUB: github.com/christianlempa
PATREON: / christianlempa
MY EQUIPMENT: kit.co/christianlempa
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:29 - Why run Linux on Windows?
01:16 - Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2)
02:32 - Windows Terminal
05:04 - ZSH and Powerlevel10k on Linux
07:39 - YADM Dotfiles Manager
09:37 - VSCode
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All links with "*" are affiliate links.

[@meathead919]

Microsoft really caught up the last 5 years, wsl and wslg with vscode is absolutely mindblowing.

[@isouravgope]

its just a lite weight vm these days , during wsl1 there were some major issues like mounting a file img and other stuffs so they literally removed the whole llinux to windows binary translator and made wsl2 which uses a light weight linux kernel , though the main point i used wsl1 cause of the android adb and now it doesn't work at all in wsl2 as there is no binary translator so there is no bus access between windows and wsl...though everything's aside its a fluent tool and a light weight vm for developers on the go

[@codeman99-dev]

I'm absolutely loving up WSL2. Very excited for WSLg to be officially released.

[@christianlempa]

Oh yeah, this will be cool :D

[@samvanhamn]

This video needs about 1000 times the views it currently has. Fantastic content!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like it :)

[@okidokiyowyow356]

Awesome video. I will setup my wsl2 tomorrow and I came across this video. It's really helpful

[@DevOpsHawk]

You're awesome Christian! I just joined membership program. Thanks a lot for this wonderful contents. PS. My favourite feature of WSL is split screen pane horizontal or vertical, love this :)

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much 😃 and welcome to the community, bro! Oh yeah this feature is really awesome.

[@dipstick555]

Dope, thanks for not being boring

[@christianlempa]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@faysoufox]

Thank you, you have answered many questions I had.

[@christianlempa]

You're welcome, glad you liked it 😁

[@higgz17]

OMG thanks for this tutorial, really needed it !

[@christianlempa]

You’re welcome

[@ThePandaGuitar]

Wow, great content. I installed WSL2 but was not exactly sure how it fits with the rest of the system. Great to have the best of both worlds!

[@christianlempa]

Glad it helped!

[@MinnaPerala84]

Thank you for the walk through! I'm about to switch from macOS to Windows and want to get most out of it. Cheers!

[@JorgeMartinez-xb2ks]

Same here

[@mohammedabu-taleb8890]

This is great! Keep up

[@christianlempa]

Thanks, will do!

[@razaz03]

Fantastic tutorial - also aged well!

[@ARESCOM_PA]

Thanks! This video is really helpful. Hope you come up with a newer video sort of an update to this one. Anyway, following your steps, I tried Cascadia Code and JetBrainsMono Nerd Font in my terminal and they look great too!

[@AMoktar]

Thanks . Awesome video

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it!

[@alphenit]

great content as always!!! I've watched this tutorial and your Docker VSCode Python Tutorial, Run your App in a Container video. Only thing I was missing in those video's is where do you use Git? There are so many possibilities. (code directly in WSL within a venv, download a python container and use that etc etc) Using Git(hub) to track your code is essential. So my question is, where do you do your code commits when using vscode with WSL and Docker?

[@invizible00]

Hi Christian, Thanks for a great video. I like your color so much

[@christianlempa]

Thank you :D

[@koplive3731]

Thanks fireship!

[@norvegrvagr]

Thant you! Very informative! Always forgot to subscribe watching your helpful videos..( Now it's time to subscribe. Your content is great!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! :D

[@FelipeOliveir4]

I have been having problems with the vs code dont open from wsl ubuntu, ubuntu says that dont have permission to open vs code.

[@oliver.travelling]

This helped me a lot! Thanks for sharing this video

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! Happy to help 😀

[@marcoroose9973]

Ich habe vor kurzem auf Windows 11 umgestellt. Die Kombination aus WSL und dem neuen Windows Terminal ist einfach großartig, ich bin super zufrieden.

[@christianlempa]

Cool! Danke das zu hören, und ja finde ich auch :)

[@tajsec498]

thanks for this great video, I had a question about zsh , How to enable cursor blinking in windows terminal ?? (I'm using wsl2 )

[@Liam-ey2gs]

Do you by chance have a video on how you configured Arch on wsl?

[@dimensionalilusions4520]

Hi there, the powerlevel10k theme and icons are not showing properly in vscode but it works perfectly on windows terminal

[@alfredoolmedo744]

I'm agree it's just a Tool to Achive Something.

[@cryzz0n]

Thanks mate, currently I'm quite new to linux, in my new job we use Virtual Box to use Ubuntu. So with this method we dont actually need to use the Ubuntu gui to run a web browser or vscode, we still use those tools in the windows os, is that how it works, thanks!

[@Pervy]

slick stuff my guy

[@christianlempa]

thanks :D

[@user-eq8ks8mr8s]

Thank you for the great video! I learnt about yadm from you today!!!! awesome

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! Glad you liked it :)

[@JanisWalliser]

Any thoughts on IntelliJ as IDE? It has gotten lots of improvement in regards to WSL the last few releases.

[@christianlempa]

I generally don't like any JetBrains IDE, but this is probably just my personal taste. Objectively they're not bad, I just don't like the feeling... 😄

[@techinsider3611]

Loved it bro. Love from Pakistan.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! Greetings from Germany :)

[@spirosfraganastasis5322]

Thanks for the video Christian! I have subscribed to your channel and will keep an eye on any updates! I just wanted to ask your opinion for Ansible on WSL. Thanks

[@christianlempa]

Thanks mate! Ansible works great on WSL2 ;)

[@pighuizhi7364]

Are there a specific installation instruction videos? Although the relevant documentation is listed in the video description, I am concerned that doing it wrong will prevent you from falling back to a clean environment. This will always go wrong.

[@nekratesblanoirc2951]

Your terminal looks clean !, whats font are you using (also, are you using Windows Terminal or ..) ?

[@christianlempa]

Yeah, Windows Terminal and WSL customizations ;)

[@SL_Beast]

there is a problem though you can't access wlan0 through wsl2 if you don't have windows10 pro because in order to access wlan0 through wsl2 you need to have hyper v enabled and hyper v is only available in windows 10 pro

[@darthvader4899]

Can you share your WindowsTerminalIcons folder please ? btw GREAT VIDEO thanks a lot

[@jj-icejoe6642]

Just format, install Arch and AWM + ZSH done ! No more winbloat with Microsoft and Google big brothers watching you all time !

[@eduardocortinas3800]

How did you get your terminal in VSCode to render properly? Mine looks weird when using the FiraCode Nerd Font Mono font in it.

[@christianlempa]

Some don't work so well, I think I'm using the Retina Font that works mostly.

[@mhmh_frhn]

dotfiles not found to change color terminal

[@bpdtaran]

Sir in your github repo I can't find your settings.json file for colour schemes!

[@PostcardsFromJapan]

WSL is a godsend and the best thing that ever happened to Windows!

[@christianlempa]

True :D

[@ahmadanis9930]

Great work. Appreciation from Pakistan

[@christianlempa]

Thank you mate! :)

[@gopikrishna679]

A lot of commands like chmod, du, df, tr , etc don’t work in the windows terminal. Its really very frustrating working with linux in windows

[@darthvader4899]

When i execute ls the folders and files have a high contrast purple and their name is blue so its hard to read and see how can i make it like yours??

[@christianlempa]

I'll update the colortheme soon. That will make things better :)

[@themohtab]

what tools do you use for recording/editing videos ?

[@christianlempa]

For recording I use OBS, and for editing I recently switched from Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve. Absolutely amazing tools in my opinion 😄

[@Ravik-no6wx]

Any tips on changing terminal colors inside vs code? I mean - change the directory colors, directory background etc.

[@christianlempa]

You can just use my vscode theme

[@javilionaire]

Hey, it looks like the windows folder is missing from your dotprofiles github repo, can't find your settings.json :( Also, i noticed there's a .bashrc file as well. Have you moved away from zsh?

[@christianlempa]

Ok yeah, you can find it now on my other repo dotfiles-win

[@sadokabdelbasset3226]

sir i'm using wsl too, i dont know how to setup vpn in it, can you help me please

[@irfanyudi4650]

hi :) how to acsess postgresql in windows with wsl2 ?

[@darthvader4899]

How do you have icons when you list files in folder??

[@fernandocaballero5102]

look for colorls and install it

[@theprimecoder4981]

Everytime I enable wsl I get blue screen when I shift my laptop

[@coderboyakash5853]

Hi how you are running two bash shell in one tab of terminal like bash1, *bash2

[@christianlempa]

You can tile the windows with a hotkey in the Windows Terminal, that's pretty useful

[@coderboyakash5853]

@@christianlempa actually I have asked that because I need the feature that new tab open in current tab

[@tiamatjax7819]

do you need windows pro edition?

[@n001sourabhmahto3]

where is the json file for color schemes?

[@TheFeaz]

Stupid questions... but I can't seem to find the Windows JSON files like you're showing there in your GitHub....There is no "Windows" under "Main". ???

[@christianlempa]

I think they have changed a lot in their config support recently, not sure where it is now

[@hackerspider1]

Did you change it on github couldn't find some files was thinking to use same colors in iterm2. As I am already using Oh my ZSH and powerlelvel10k.

[@christianlempa]

I organized the files a bit differently, and also switched my prompt the last months, so yeah might be an update.

[@hackerspider1]

@@christianlempa why don’t you make same for iterm? I have tried to get same colors but looks different. I loved your one can you please make one for mac.

[@marcelodevops]

You have a great theme for VS Code. Is It an extension?

[@christianlempa]

Thank you mate! This is a vscode theme that I'm currently making myself. I'll make it available as an extensions, soon. I'll let you know once it is available :)

[@ericksonjosephsantos1964]

@@christianlempa up fo this

[@noelanaya2912]

I've a question, i'm working actually in a web development, but when i open a live server, i can't open the ip of the live server with Windows. Do u know how can i solve it?

[@christianlempa]

hmm not sure, maybe you can take a look at our discord for help

[@hugo9577]

How can I get those color Schemes for zsh terminal ? those aren't in your github settings.json repo!

[@christianlempa]

The color schemes are in the settings file, but I also did some customizations to the color codes used by powershell that are in the .p10k file. Hope this helps :)

[@hugo9577]

@@christianlempa Yes! I checked all the color schemes of the settings file but non of those are the ones from this video. This personalization looks awesome! Is it possible to get them?

[@christianlempa]

@@hugo9577 still not sure, I'll check the repo later. But feel free to send me a DM on Discord if you don't find it.

[@PrasannaVarshan]

Really? this guy just have 15K sub? Common humans, be respectful and sub for talents like this!

[@christianlempa]

Haha thank you 😊

[@tirthachatterjee]

Building 32bit embedded system not possible on WSL / WSL2.

[@mdshamratapugazi610]

slanting style shows ugly in vscode terminal even after changing font family in vscode. please help fix this.

[@christianlempa]

Well, that's always going to be an issue, I haven't found a great fix for that in vscode either :/

[@tomekkicaj700]

Love your hair setup for linux dev too

[@demianhavdun5385]

VS code debugging peformance issues on WSL2 make me cry. But great setup besides that

[@anhkhoalouisnguyen9958]

👍

[@ericksonjosephsantos1964]

Can we relaunch the setup wizard for powerlevel10k??

[@christianlempa]

Yes you can execute the p10k configure command again

[@dhawang.gayash4080]

I love what wsl2, which helps one not to worry about CRLF/^M line feeds. But honestly, just pay $500-750 more and get a Mac. BTW writing code on VM is a pain. Don’t get me started on debugging. Way too many layers….

[@OfficialTkStar]

Sere the great..

[@UltimateKeyboardHero]

I was using this for a while, then I had trouble setting up minikube, so I stopped. :/ Guess I'll give this another shot

[@christianlempa]

Haven't tried minikube, yet. I just did one installation of microk8s, which seems to be pretty similar. But recently I found it easier to just go with Docker Desktop, btw the Kubernetes extension of it is also great!

[@UltimateKeyboardHero]

@@christianlempa thanks for the insight. Will try it out with microk8s, minikube and kind were problematic. Yea you can have Docker on desktop and still have it running in your WSL env. That was useful haha. I'm quite new to DevOps, keep up the amazing content yo. Much love from Lanka!

[@N30Z3R0]

ca-careca do adrenaline? 😳😳😳

[@adrian333dev]

humpty dumpty in alternative universe

[@matinsen1980]

Where do I find that distribution? "Arch Linux"

[@christianlempa]

I used this project here: github.com/yuk7/ArchWSL , but note it's not liked by the Arch devs :D

[@neilgreene]

May have already been asked. But, I use the same color theme you have with my desktop and ALL of my trading software, charts, trading platforms. Can you share your VSCODE color theme - I am guessing it has already been asked. So, sorry for the repeat!

[@CasualBIL]

How do I get icons when using the 'ls' command? Is there a plugin you are using?

[@christianlempa]

I'm using the "exa" project: github.com/ogham/exa, I just created an alias in my zshrc file calling exa with --icons parameter

[@markojozic3944]

Found this channel via odysee :D

[@christianlempa]

Haha nice :D Are you watching it on YT more or on Odysee? Just curious :)

[@danyielsanchez5159]

@@christianlempa Well, in my case more and more often I stay on Odysee. Of course many channels that I follow only publish on YT. But it's so good that Odysee is growing.

[@timothygibney159]

I love th flexibility of Linux window managers but hate xorg and gnome 3

[@christianlempa]

Well in Linux you're not forced to use it right? :P

[@r0mankon]

Why not use git instead of yadm? I didn't get it.

[@christianlempa]

Adds some useful features to it.

[@dash2212]

Are the dotfiles gone? 😢

[@christianlempa]

You should find ‚em on my dotfiles-win repo

[@moeinmhzg7827]

Awsooooome

[@christianlempa]

Thanks!

[@lucasg7282]

More easy install one distro :)

[@christianlempa]

?

[@lbasavaraj]

WSL2 just kills my memory, hope it’s better on Windows 11

[@codeman99-dev]

You can limit WSL2 with a simple config. Search for "WSL2 memory limit". Of course if you are experience memory problems it is probably because you are really stressing the subsystem with multiple containers (both WSL2 & docker apply here). In which case, it actually falls more on the docker team than it does the host operating system. The Hyper-V system is still very very new.

[@hansphung]

I’m using WSL2 on Windows 11. It is not any better.

[@christianlempa]

Has anyone found out what the problem is there? I got this response from other people as well, but the only way seems to limit the memory of WSL in the config file.

[@hansphung]

@@christianlempa or upgrade you RAM to 32G 😁. I'm a Magento developer and Magento itself is heavy and resource consuming. Limit the memory in the config file does not work for me as it sometimes causes weird issues like Elasticsearch container dies for no reason.

[@christianlempa]

@@hansphung yep thats also a good solution 🤣

[@darthvader4899]

Can you actually show us step by step how to do it for noobs like me please

[@Rdrudra99]

Vs Code theme name?

[@christianlempa]

The Digital Life 😆

[@jaycodes8790]

But i have window home basic.... WSL doesn't work on that.

[@GustavoVeraScuderiPY]

It should work if you have Windows 10 or 11 and virtualization enabled on your CPU (VT-X on Intel and SVM fffor AMD)

[@sabbirahamedmaruf322]

Try Garuda linux.

[@christianlempa]

Hm I don't see any reason why, sorry

[@trinib1]

mind reader

[@anjanbora7943]

It seems using wsl u format ur hair 💋

[@christianlempa]

lol? :D

[@KevinFarleyWV]

I'm late to the comments but after using WSL2 for more than a year, I think I have some valid experience. If you were never a Linux user, then sure, you might like WSL2 and think you are running Linux. When you want to really develop code and have solid access to hardware, you will find yourself frustrated at the complexity of going the WSL2 route vs running native. Just my experience from a firmware engineer with 19 years experience in Linux. After listening to his explanation of customizing the terminal and shell, I have to say that's unnecessary in Linux. This is just my opinion, but if I was allowed to erase Windows off my work machine, I'd install Linux and never use Windows again.

[@SpaceTimeBeing_]

Linux is great enough, it is weird when people stay on windows adamantly when they don't even use windows only apps. You can even game on Linux now.

[@codeman99-dev]

As a software developer, I hate this stance. We now have official support for linux from a trusted company without needed to convince our employer to trust a "linux company" (such as Red Hat or Canonical). Plus it means that I don't need to mess with the host operating system, which was probably modified by my employer's IT staff. So I get to have my preferred environment, AND keep my co-workers on the IT team happy.

[@TR1AGE]

Based on personal experience, I'd say weak adoption of Linux is largely due to the graphical desktop experience.. Linux is great for headless applications, but desktop environments (unity, plasma, etc) still have a long ways to go. DEs remain buggy and unstable even on totally standard hardware setups. Most professionals just want an OS that gets out of their way, so they can do their real jobs.

[@familyshare3724]

Windows-WSL2 networking sucks. Vanilla Linux is the best development environment, bar none.

[@etaashmathamsetty7399]

bro just use linux at this point...

[@christianlempa]

Nope

[@etaashmathamsetty7399]

@@christianlempa why, I switched to linux for coding and now I use it as my daily driver for c++, linux is necessary

[@uenmedia4528]

You created a fake video, and you're providing explanations without full transparency. When sharing links, you make it seem like you're generously sharing valuable information, but the links lead to different content. Are you attempting to deceive people? The Dotfiles link appears to be fake as well. What will you ask for next, a Patreon subscription to access these links? This approach is quite frustrating. I'm sorry, but this isn't a legitimate way to earn trust or credibility. Ultimately, you may lose credibility with this approach.

[@KhomoBumble]

Win sucks for development. Once you will try mac - you will never come back. WSL dont make life easier. Want linux - try real ubuntu.

[@thegenxgamerguy6562]

Regolith desktop on Linux. I just don't want to drag windows around anymore and I hate taking my fingers of the keyboard. For development: JetBrains Rider. Shell: zsh on kitty