Linux on Windows - not that bad. I feel less lost when using Windows this way.

So, I installed the Linux subsystem for Windows yesterday for the first time. Then I installed Ubuntu for Windows.

I have to say I'm quite impressed.

I've had an X-server running on Windows for quite a while I I could use PLink from the VcXsrv program (a fork of XMing that seems to work for me when XMing does not). Now I still have to use that same X-server since the Windows stuff doesn't technically support X, but I can run local X programs from Windows. Haven't done many yet, the standard xeyes seems to be just fine, I tried doing an ssh -Y to another machine and it looks like remote X programs aren't working this way so I still have to use PLink, but I'm going to work on that. I'm not a big fan of PLink, when I get into the remote system console mismatches make life miserable. I can launch Windows programs from Bash just like I do PowerShell, but using Bash to launch PLink simply introduces different issues with the console.

I've deleted my default home directory and did a symbolic link to my Windows home. That appears to work just fine so far. I hope I don't run into file permissions hell.....

When I check my I.P. address it is my Windows I.P. address. When I check /proc/cpuinfo it appears to match my machine. I don't know how they did it exactly, but it looks like it's a kernel in a kernel, actually running Linux on Windows, not like the old Cygwin way of doing things, which provided nice .exe files that let me run Linux commands if I dumped them in System32, but the bash shell running on Windows was compiled for windows and just sucked to use.

To do any sort of work with X I have to export DISPLAY=:0 and even when I do that I have to sometimes do it two or three times to get it to work.

What I've noticed:
I tend to use cross platform programs. I don't care if I'm using Mac OS, Windows or Linux I'm using the Brave Browser, FreeFileSync, VLC, Clementine, and most any other thing you can think of cross-platform or natively. When it's something that isn't cross platform, like a graphical text editor I usually just use a substitute and don't care. With this in mind, support of X applications doesn't seem to matter all that much except in a few rare instances (mostly remote). I think I'm going to do great things with this, or at least hate Windows a bit less when I have to work from a command prompt.