After the installation is finished, I usually create a desktop icon and assign the shortcut CTRL + ALT + B (for “bash”) so that I can open a new shell session conveniently via keyboard.
You can press win+x i to open a terminal if you want to keep your desktop clean 🙂
At least on 11, it opens the right-click menu for the start bar, which has two entries for launching the terminal (as the current user or as adminstrator). Not sure about the shortcut, but this menu was also present on 10.
At least on windows 11, if you first press win-x, it opens the right click menu, and then pressing i after opens the windows terminal. Maybe you also need to install the windows terminal?
I haven’t seriously developed on windows in years but I remember really liking MSYS2 as a way to use GNU/Posix/Whatever utilities natively on Windows. If I recall correctly, I did almost everything inside of VirtualBox VMs using Vagrant. This was around the time WSL first launched as well. I am wondering if using native Windows binaries for Docker through MINGW/MSYS2 has any benefits over using Docker in WSL2?
I am wondering if using native Windows binaries for Docker through MINGW/MSYS2 has any benefits over using Docker in WSL2?
Docker Desktop manages WSL2 or Hyper-V VMs and the command-line tools that it installs can be run from cmd.exe, PowerShell, or a WSL session, so I don’t know why you’d use MSYS for this. I use WSL1 to provide me a shell (it’s lighter-weight than WSL2 and is faster for accessing the Windows filesystem) and then ssh into VMs or connect to Docker-managed (WSL2) VMs from there. No MSYS needed and it can run any Windows .exe file directly.
For me it’s simply because I used MinGW before WSL existed and then never had a reason to switch. The one time I tried (see comment above) the experience was “worse” than what I had, so I didn’t have any motivation to go on with it. But that might be different if I’d be a new user.
My experience with MinGW as a developer environment probably coloured my view of MSYS as a tool (though last time I tried it, their terminal was awful and far worse than either the Windows Terminal or Konsole in X11 from WSL). They use PE/COFF binaries but with a load of extensions to make them kind-of like ELF, so you end up with something that doesn’t behave quite like Windows or *NIX and waste so much time debugging those differences that it’s simpler to just add a Windows implementation of your platform abstraction layer.
Honestly, I don’t know. I tried WSL2 when it was launched a couple of years ago due to the promised “better performance” with bind-mounted files in docker - but the reverse happened. Unless files are stored “in” the WSL (making them not accesible from Windows any longer) the file access was horribly slow. I’ve posted this in https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-531567528 and the issue is still not resolved (though I didn’t try WSL since then).
You can now install these more conveniently with
winget:You can press
win+x ito open a terminal if you want to keep your desktop clean 🙂“Where” do I run this? I’ve been using MinGW for so long that I feel like a monkey with any Windows-native tools :D
This opens the start menu for me :/ Which Windows version are you using? (I’m on Win 10)
At least on 11, it opens the right-click menu for the start bar, which has two entries for launching the terminal (as the current user or as adminstrator). Not sure about the shortcut, but this menu was also present on 10.
Can confirm. That’s what i meant with “start menu”, sry for the mis-wording here.
Shortcut to me means “launch from keyboard with a key combination”. With the menu, I’d still have to “navigate” to entry I believe?
At least on windows 11, if you first press win-x, it opens the right click menu, and then pressing
iafter opens the windows terminal. Maybe you also need to install the windows terminal?I haven’t seriously developed on windows in years but I remember really liking MSYS2 as a way to use GNU/Posix/Whatever utilities natively on Windows. If I recall correctly, I did almost everything inside of VirtualBox VMs using Vagrant. This was around the time WSL first launched as well. I am wondering if using native Windows binaries for Docker through MINGW/MSYS2 has any benefits over using Docker in WSL2?
Docker Desktop manages WSL2 or Hyper-V VMs and the command-line tools that it installs can be run from cmd.exe, PowerShell, or a WSL session, so I don’t know why you’d use MSYS for this. I use WSL1 to provide me a shell (it’s lighter-weight than WSL2 and is faster for accessing the Windows filesystem) and then ssh into VMs or connect to Docker-managed (WSL2) VMs from there. No MSYS needed and it can run any Windows .exe file directly.
For me it’s simply because I used MinGW before WSL existed and then never had a reason to switch. The one time I tried (see comment above) the experience was “worse” than what I had, so I didn’t have any motivation to go on with it. But that might be different if I’d be a new user.
My experience with MinGW as a developer environment probably coloured my view of MSYS as a tool (though last time I tried it, their terminal was awful and far worse than either the Windows Terminal or Konsole in X11 from WSL). They use PE/COFF binaries but with a load of extensions to make them kind-of like ELF, so you end up with something that doesn’t behave quite like Windows or *NIX and waste so much time debugging those differences that it’s simpler to just add a Windows implementation of your platform abstraction layer.
Honestly, I don’t know. I tried WSL2 when it was launched a couple of years ago due to the promised “better performance” with bind-mounted files in docker - but the reverse happened. Unless files are stored “in” the WSL (making them not accesible from Windows any longer) the file access was horribly slow. I’ve posted this in https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-531567528 and the issue is still not resolved (though I didn’t try WSL since then).