WSL2: Roll Your Own
I have always been fond of my VMs to isolate my experiments form my main OS. For a long time it was all about using VirtualBox for running VMs, Vagrant for provisioning them and Packer for creating my own custom images. Then WSL came along, and while lightweight, it never really felt as fully featured as I wanted it to be. Over the last few years, however, Microsoft have come a long way and now there is really no need to manage VMs yourself unless you are doing something very exotic. If fact the whole WSL experience is so smooth that it is indistinguishable from pure magic. This never sits well with the control freak in me. 🤣 This post is a summary of my approach to rolling my own WSL environment and will cover topics like using custom Linux images, managing multiple environments, and tweaking more advanced WSL settings.