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I have a laptop with Windows 10. I have to get Ubuntu for a project. I did some research and according to this, I can run it on Windows 10.

Has anyone had any experience with this?

Is it better to download Ubuntu from Ubuntu website and use it alongside the Windows operating system or go ahead and use it on Windows?

muru
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Jack
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3 Answers3

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I have to get Ubuntu for a project.

You need to be more specific than that. What are the requirements? Running a Desktop environment? Some people achieved doing that with xming, but it's not recommended and not a setup we support here at AskUbuntu. If you just need Bash it might cover your needs, but you will need to switch your installation to receive Insider builds, because this feature hasn't been officially released yet. Insider builds are not ready for production, so you shouldn't use these unless your project is about evaluating this particular feature in its current state. Another downside is that new Insider builds are very similar to certain stages of (re-)installing Windows, they take a considerable amount of time complete and are heavy in disk utilization. (New builds land every few weeks but on occasions they can happen more than once in a week.) Clearly, it's not for production use on just one laptop you may have. (I have spare devices like a Windows Phone, an older Laptop and a VM in the fast ring, so I have some experience with Insider builds.)

Use a VM. Best of all, you can snapshot any time.

LiveWireBT
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That does not say you can run Ubuntu on Windows 10, it says you can run a bash shell on Windows 10, that is nothing like running the Ubuntu OS on Windows.

While bash is a big part of Ubuntu it exists separately from Ubuntu and is the interface for most Linux based OS.

The point of bash for Windows is just to bring the functionality of the bash shell to Windows 10.

You would be looking for a full install, please see this question for instructions.

Community
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Mark Kirby
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Now that Windows 10 Anniversary Update (Win10AU) has been released, I wanted to clear up a few points:

Terminology:

  1. Yes, the naming of this stuff is far from optimal, but just be glad we didn't call this thing Windows Subsystem for Running POSIX, GNU and Linux Compatible Command Line Tools and Applications - WSRPGLCCLTA ;)
  2. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is the name of the (optional) Windows feature that provides a distro-agnostic, Linux kernel compatible, infrastructure that can load and run unmodified Linux ELF-64 binaries
  3. Bash.exe is the Windows executable that runs when you enter bash at the Windows Command-Prompt/PowerShell/etc. All it does is open a console Window and asks WSL to start-up the /bin/bash Linux binary.
  4. Bash on Ubuntu on Windows is the name of the Ubuntu instance you install when you run Bash.exe for the first time after enabling developer-mode and WSL
  5. I often refer to Bash/WSL as a shortcut to refer to the entire feature set.
  6. Bash/WSL is FAR more than just the Bash prompt - it allows you to run many/most GNU/Linux user-land command-line tools directly on Windows. Thus, it allows you to run and install/manage packages using apt-get and dpkg.
  7. Bash/WSL is a "Beta" feature in Win10AU as it's not yet complete. While it runs many tools very well, its networking stack and device support in particular need work. We're continuing to add additional capabilities for future releases as rapidly as possible

To answer @Maryann Ethan's original question:

You may be able to run what you need on Bash/WSL. If you cannot, you may want to use a VM instead as @LiveWireBT suggested

Why/when would you use Bash/WSL vs. a VM?

A Linux VM and the associated VM infrastructure (e.g. Hyper-V / VirtualBox / VMWare / etc.) consumes quite a lot of space and resources. However, a VM gives a full-fidelity Linux experience.

Bash/WSL requires FAR less resources/space and sits alongside the rest of your Windows tools, apps, etc. and can directly access files on your Windows filesystem if you wish, making it very productive, very quickly. However, Bash/WSL is very new and as yet incomplete, so you may well find incompatibilities or issues.

HTH.

Rich Turner
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