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Linux Subsystem Files To Become Accessible via Windows File Explorer (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the better-synergy dept.

One of Windows Subsystem for Linux's more annoying tricks is it's hard to get at your Linux files from Windows. From a report: Oh, you can do it, but you take a real chance of ruining the files. To quote Microsoft, "DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, access, create, and/or modify files in your distro's filesystem using Windows apps, tools, scripts, consoles, etc." In the forthcoming Windows 10 April 2019 Update, aka Windows 10 19H1, this Linux file problem will finally be fixed. According to Craig Loewen, a Microsoft programming manger working on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), "The next Windows update is coming soon and we're bringing exciting new updates to WSL with it! These include accessing the Linux file system from Windows, and improvements to how you manage and configure your distros in the command line."

1 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Education use cases by godrik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I teach computer science at a state school. And some students laptop can not quite run VMs, for a bunch a reasons (that range from shitty hardware, to not enough memory, and through the virtualization bit got disabled in the BIOS because the constructor wanted to sell a more expensive laptop for developpers).

    I had used WSL for the class. And that was a complete catastrophe. The filesystem interaction were just not working right. I am guessing it is because students went editting the file through the file explorer. But we were getting the strangest bugs.

    So I have told students to absolutely use the VM and we are working around the few cases of laptops that are not quite good enough. And the clas goes fine so far.

    If MS can deliver a working WSL, I may consider using it again.