notes

Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

Getting bash

This section may not be up to date with the latest versions of Windows. Please see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

This is available in Windows 10 as of the Anniversary Update.

Press WinKey+R, type winver and press ENTER
If the version number reads 1607, then you have the Anniversary Update installed. The bash subsystem will use Ubuntu 14.04
If the version number reads 1703, then you have the Creators Update installed. The bash subsystem will use Ubuntu 16.04

To enable bash:

  1. Turn on Developer mode in Settings > Update & security > For developers
  2. Open Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows features on or off
  3. Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta)
  4. Open the command prompt and type bash to install the linux subsystem

Using bash

Do not change Linux files using Windows apps and tools

  1. DO store files in your Windows filesystem that you want to create/modify using Windows tools AND Linux tools
  2. DO NOT create / modify Linux files from Windows apps, tools, scripts or consoles

Java setup

Do not use the default-jre and default-jdk packages, as those use the OpenJDK/JRE vendor. We want to use the Oracle vendor.

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/45608467/3033899

Fix path

By default, the linux $PATH will include everything in the windows path. Add this to the .bashrc file to remove specific paths from $PATH.

### remove unnecessary Win PATHs
# This can prevent extension-less commands from bleeding into BASH.
# (eg. "ng" would execute the Win bin if "@angular/cli" wasn't installed on Linux.)
#
function path_remove {
  # Delete path by parts so we can never accidentally remove sub paths
  PATH=${PATH//":$1:"/":"} # delete any instances in the middle
  PATH=${PATH/#"$1:"/} # delete any instance at the beginning
  PATH=${PATH/%":$1"/} # delete any instance at the end
}
 
#path_remove '/mnt/c/Users/me/AppData/Roaming/npm'
#path_remove '/mnt/c/Program Files/Git'
#path_remove '/mnt/c/Program Files/Git/cmd'
path_remove '/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/nodejs'
#path_remove '/mnt/c/OpenSSL-Win32/bin'
path_remove '/mnt/c/Python27'
path_remove '/mnt/c/Python27/Scripts'
path_remove '/mnt/c/Program Files/MongoDB/Server/3.2/bin'
path_remove '/mnt/c/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/apache-maven-3.3.3/bin'

Source

To see which paths actually need to be removed:

  1. Comment out all the calls to path_remove
  2. Execute . .bashrc to apply any changes to .bashrc
  3. Execute echo $PATH to see the current state of the linux path
    • Execute echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | sort to put each item on its own line and sort
  4. Update the calls to path_remove to specify paths to be removed (each one must be specified - children of that path are not included)

Add aliases

Create a file called .bash_aliases in the same folder as .bashrc

Add all aliases to this file, like so:

alias cmd='/mnt/c/Windows/System32/cmd.exe'
alias ccmd='cmd /C "start cmd /K $@"' # Executes any command in a new cmd window
alias winhome='cd /mnt/c/Users/me'
alias dev='cd /mnt/c/dev'

Consider adding programs to the Windows path (which should automatically be included in the linux path too) before creating an alias for a program.

Node

install with nvm

Follow the installation steps for nvm (install steps)

Close the bash terminal and open it again. Type command -v nvm and it should print nvm (verify installation)

Use nvm to install node (nvm usage)

If this causes the shell to take several seconds to open, please update the nvm portion of .bashrc as suggested in the latest comments here https://github.com/creationix/nvm/issues/1277.

install directly

nvm seems to have slowness issues right now, so this might be a more favorable approach. The downside is that you will have to do updates by following these steps again.

Install node on Ubuntu 18.04 using apt

Install node on Ubuntu

Update node