I stopped dual-booting and found a better way to run Windows and Linux together
I stopped dual-booting and found a better way to run Windows and Linux together
Publish Date: 2026-04-29 09:30:00
Source Domain: www.makeuseof.com
Whenever I make a foray into using LInux, I tend to dual boot or install Linux on an older machine. When dual-booting, I really couldn’t be bothered to restart just to switch the OS. Everytime I found out something I could do in Linux better than on Windows, I’d either skip it or go find my Linux laptop, with all the file management issues that ensue around using two machines.
Then I found out about WSL and setting it up properly. I haven’t had to dual-boot on my main Windows machine since.
WSL stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux, and it’s built into Windows 10 and 11. It lets you run a real Linux environment with command line, tools, and apps without rebooting or using a separate machine. You simply open a terminal, type wsl and you’re using Linux. Close the window and you’re back in Windows, and, in fact, you never left it. Keep that streaming app running in Windows and do the Linux task at the same time.
The second version, WSL2, is pretty great. It runs an actual Linux kernel inside a lightweight background process, which gives nearly full compatibility for real software and workflows. The original WSL1 was more of a compatibility layer that left many Linux apps unable to run.
Many articles about WSL are written for developers, with bits about Docker containers, Node version managers, and git workflows. If you’re the kind of person who clicks away when you start reading that, I get it. I’m not a developer, but do find WSL useful, like when I needed to convert an entire folder of FLAC files to MP3s with a single ffmpeg command. Sure, I could have downloaded the app, run it in Windows, and gotten the same result, but WSL let me install with a simple CLI command and execute.
