Quick word of warning. A few days ago, I installed Windows Subsystem for Linux on my Windows 10 box. I was working on a React application that was written originally on a non-windows environment. The plan was to run the app through Ubuntu to get round some compatibility issues I was having. Unfortunately, the WSL installation completely floored my windows box causing multiple blue screen of death failures. It took multiple attempts to even get it to restarted and about 2 hours to get WSL off again and stabilize the windows machine. In the end I had to reset the operating system. Not good.

If you are installing Windows Subsystem for Linux, then it is highly advisable to make a system restore point before doing it (which I failed to do). Colleagues have put it on with no problem, but for me it just caused a heap of problems, and I won’t be trying it again. The message is to just exercise caution with this installation.

I still want a Linux install though. I might dual boot my Windows 10 machine – it’s not my main development machine now so it’s more available to play about with. Alternatively, I found a laptop I’d completely forgotten about it a cupboard yesterday. That could be a prime Linux installation candidate. Certainly a lot safer option than WSL.