I mean, I like WSL for what it is. Having suffered through the limitations of MinGW32 and Cygwin, I appreciate that the WSL simply “just works.” But I’m also not kidding myself, as one could get the same experience from VirtualBox and a little more elbow-grease. I also like how the WSL automatically exposes a host-only SMB mount, making the Linux filesystem a lot more accessible from the very start.
What I don’t appreciate is that the WSL places the Linux firewall outside the Windows firewall. Locking that thing down can be daunting for a novice, if it’s ever done at all. Considering that the main use-case for this is development, that means there can be a lot of WSL setups out there with exposed and vulnerable web services on 'em.
I mean, I like WSL for what it is. Having suffered through the limitations of MinGW32 and Cygwin, I appreciate that the WSL simply “just works.” But I’m also not kidding myself, as one could get the same experience from VirtualBox and a little more elbow-grease. I also like how the WSL automatically exposes a host-only SMB mount, making the Linux filesystem a lot more accessible from the very start.
What I don’t appreciate is that the WSL places the Linux firewall outside the Windows firewall. Locking that thing down can be daunting for a novice, if it’s ever done at all. Considering that the main use-case for this is development, that means there can be a lot of WSL setups out there with exposed and vulnerable web services on 'em.