Werkstatt

A WSL distribution based on Ubuntu 22.04, packed with the best programmes the command-line has to offer.

Installation

Prerequisites

1. You need to have WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) already enabled on your Windows 10 or 11 computer. See the WSL documentation for guidance on how to do that.

2. Create directories for managing your WSL distributions and images with the following Powershell commands.

   New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $\WSL
   New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $\WSL\Distributions
   New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $\WSL\Exports

Download Image & Import

1. Dowload the latest the latest release of Werkstatt in the form of the compressed image file into the Exports directory created previously.

   Invoke-WebRequest `
     -Uri https://github.com/geoffreyvanwyk/werkstatt/releases/latest/download/werkstatt.tar.zip `
     -OutFile $HOME\WSL\Exports\werkstatt.tar.zip

2. Extract the image file from the compressed archive. The file werkstatt.tar will appear in the Exports directory. (Expand-Archive is available from Powershell 5 onwards. If you do not have it available, extract using File Explorer.)

   Expand-Archive `
     -Path $HOME\WSL\Exports\werkstatt.tar.zip `
     -DestinationPath $HOME\WSL\Exports

3. Import a fresh instance of Werkstatt. This will take less than 5 minutes.

   wsl --import Werkstatt ~\WSL\Distributions\Werkstatt ~\WSL\Exports\werkstatt.tar

Usage

Connect

You can connect to Werkstatt either with Powershell or much easier with Windows Terminal.

From Powershell, connect to Werkstatt with the following command:

wsl --distribution Werkstatt --user werker --cd /home/werker

With Windows Terminal, Werkstatt will automatically appear in the list of distributions in the Window Terminal's drop-down menu. For convenience, in Windows Terminal, in the settings for Werkstatt set the "Starting Directory" setting for Werkstatt to '~'.

User

werker is the user for which all the features have been set up. The user has sudo privilege and does not need to specify a password when using sudo. In case it is needed, the password for this user is nullfehler.

License

Copyright © 2024 Geoffrey van Wyk (https://geoffreyvanwyk.dev)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.