About the Blog

About a year ago, I decided to start learning again and chose the DevOps direction. I no longer had access to infrastructure where I could deploy projects and experiment, so I began looking for a convenient way to work locally.

At first, I tried VirtualBox, but quickly realized that it wasn’t for me. Setting up environments took too much time, and the resources of my Surface simply weren’t enough for comfortable work.

Then I turned my attention to WSL, specifically its second version. It proved to be exactly what I needed: easy installation and setup, fast deployment of instances, integration with Windows and VS Code, and at the same time the feeling of working on Linux. Since then, I have been using WSL daily for learning, experiments, and projects.

Over time, I wanted to dig deeper. What capabilities does WSL offer, how can it be managed, configured, and used to automate routine tasks? I began studying the documentation, searching for information, and testing configurations I found in various sources.

In the process, I realized that the official documentation was incomplete and sometimes contained inaccuracies. Many things were described unclearly or not described at all, for example, cloud-init. Other sources turned out to be too general, superficial, and did not provide concrete answers.

Despite its apparent simplicity (compared to the core IT infrastructure I had worked with before), the WSL ecosystem was anything but trivial. It required many weeks of study and numerous experiments.

While collecting data, I tested everything in practice and recorded it as notes. Later, I felt the desire to share my observations. I chose one of the subreddits dedicated to WSL and started publishing my materials there.

After several months of working on publications about the WSL environment, cloud-init, and configuration of wsl.conf and .wslconfig, I couldn’t handle the internal pressure and deleted everything.

But, as is known, when one door closes, another opens. After long consideration, I decided to fulfill a long-standing dream: to create my own blog and publish the previously written texts, having reworked them.

This blog is a desire to systematize accumulated knowledge and share my experience. Here I will write about WSL, automation, environment configuration, and everything that makes development more convenient. And perhaps not only that.