7 Reasons Windows Subsystem for Linux Works For Me

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), when it first appeared, attracted attention and controversy when it first appeared. Here are the reasons why WSL makes sense to me as a Linux user on Windows.

HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of technology

24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets and technologies

I can jump on coding ideas

One big thing I like about WSL is that if I have an idea for something I want to try in the shell or in Python, I can just launch a terminal while I’m in Windows. This allows me to get started and experiment. If I want to look at a dataset from Kaggle, I simply download it and import it using pandas in IPython or a Jupyter notebook.

I can run consumer applications

One of the attractions of WSL is that I can run a Linux development and DIY environment alongside mainstream apps and games, the latter of which will be mentioned later. While there are more games and productivity apps for Linux, there will be more for Windows that I can anticipate in the future. It’s not like I’m a Windows enthusiast. It’s just a little… there. An operating system, I think, should go away. It’s only a way to get to more interesting things on the system.

I can still play my favorite retro games, on Windows or Linux

For some reason, the modern “AAA” gaming scene hasn’t really done it for me. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I think PC gaming peaked in the 90s. I grew up with classic adventure games like The King’s Quest series, as well as simulations like SimCity. I also love visual novels and even more modern indie titles like Balatrowhich I think is a modern classic. Maybe it’s not newer games but retro games that push me towards Windows.

Most modern versions of these games available are for Windows, although Steam and GoG support Linux. Most of the games I like are ones that the developers don’t seem to have ported. This is strange in the case of retro GoG games, which often use ScummVM or DOSBox, both of which are readily available for Linux. I don’t want to use WINE just to open an archive that an emulator will run. At least for fun stuff it would probably push me towards Windows.

No reboot

What I like about WSL is that I don’t need to interrupt my flow when I want to try something on Linux on Windows by rebooting on another system. If I want to launch SSH or Python, I can simply call up an Ubuntu terminal window. This is the same as if I had opened a terminal on a desktop Linux system.

It comes down to my ability to immediately jump on ideas. I don’t want to interrupt my flow by shutting down Windows, going to Grub and starting Linux. By the time I can launch a terminal on the Linux desktop, I might forget why I wanted to do it in the first place.

I can get a full Linux desktop experience if I want

Most Linux applications I use are terminal based. This is why I’m more in favor of the WSL in the first place. The ability to run Linux graphical apps in WSL on Windows 11 has increased its usefulness. There is yet another game that I like called XGalagaa clone of the classic arcade game Galaga.

I can also launch a full desktop environment. This could be on the old laptop I installed a version of Debian on, or on the various VMs I keep for testing, especially with my favorite Xfce environment.

I’ve always been more agnostic towards Linux desktop environments. There are only a limited number of ways to place windows on the screen and move them around. I probably imprinted the desktop metaphor somehow, even though I could live in a simple window manager if I could only live on a Linux system full time.

This means I could escape to a full Linux environment if I really wanted or needed to.

Windows might be hard to escape in practice

The main reason I use WSL is that in my professional and recreational computing life it seems like Windows will exist in some form. This might change in the future, but there will probably still be plenty of older games and programs that I’ll want to run in the future, if only for nostalgia’s sake.

This says more about the software companies than it does about me. Linux is great for creating things and actually participating in technology rather than just sitting and scrolling through endless feeds.

WSL showcases one of Linux’s greatest strengths

Linux’s ability to interact with other systems is one of the culture’s strengths and probably one of the reasons why it is so dominant among Unix-like systems today. I don’t think I’ve seen other operating systems emphasize this point so much. WSL illustrates what makes Linux so valuable as a practical computing tool: you don’t have to commit to it as an all-or-nothing system.

You can run a full Linux system on a non-Windows machine, dual-boot a system, connect to a remote Linux server via SSH, or run it over WSL. You have a real choice in how you use it.

Whatever you think of WSL, it has opened up new possibilities in my digital life by mixing Windows and Linux.