Setup

This document contains a walkthrough on how to install WSL and set it up for Python development.

Install

To install WSL, we follow the official documentation given by Microsoft → here

Increase RAM Allocation

By default, WSL only uses a fraction of the RAM available. Windows requires 4 GB of RAM to function but we will give it an extra 2GB. Therefore, we can safely give WSL MAX_RAM - 6 GB to use.

The following command can be used to allocate a specific amount of RAM to WSL but note that the actual GB value should be AT MOST 6 GB less than your installed RAM (total available to Windows, in this example 32GB-6GB=24GB):

Write-Output "[wsl2]
memory=24GB" >> "${env:USERPROFILE}\.wslconfig"

wsl --shutdown

Instructions adapted from this StackOverflow post

Python Setup

Refer to Python Development Doc for instructions on configuring virtualenvwrapper.

Install ffmpeg

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install ffmpeg

To know how to use ffmpeg, refer to this tutorial.
Additional resources can be found here

Aliases and other shortcuts

Linux allows us to create various aliases which allow us write shorcuts for longer commands. To do this, create a new ~/.bash_aliases file and save it in ~

.bash_aliases
alias a=alias
a cls="clear"
a multipull="ls | parallel git -C {} pull"
a jp="jupyter notebook --no-browser"
a jl="jupyter lab --no-browser"
a gs='git status'

tmux

Since WSL is an instance of Ubuntu Server, you are only limited to using the terminal. tmux allows you to split the single terminal into n different terminals.
It is especially helpful when we are running multiple jobs on the same machine for longer times.
tmux, out of the box, is only driven by the keyboard. It does not accept mouse input, but the .tmux.conf can be modified so that it allows mouse input.
```
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install tmux

  cd ~
  git clone https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux
  ln -s -f .tmux/.tmux.conf
```
When we want to run long jobs on MSI through SSH (such as when connected via VPN SSH on a laptop), running directly through terminal will halt us from closing our system or disconnecting the source system from target system from which we started the job.

In such cases, using tmux helps us detach and re-attach our system to the tmux session that runs. Follow below steps in these situations.

  Open a tmux session with "tmux".
  We can start the long-running task on the MSI.
  Then press "Ctrl + b d" to detach from the session.
  You can then close the window.
  You can reattach to the session with "tmux a"

Here are popular cheatsheets for tmux:

Setup

Install​

Increase RAM Allocation​

Python Setup​

Install ffmpeg​

Aliases and other shortcuts​

tmux​