[rtodea]

I recently migrated to Windows from MacOS and have found the following paid apps really helpful:

1. [Pengwin](https://www.whitewaterfoundry.com/) - a customized Debian distribution with helpful scripts for setting up a dev environment

2. [X410](https://x410.dev/) - a customized X11 Server

They made all the setup really easy. I reuse some of the scripts from Penguin in the Ubuntu distribution.

One caveat for those who want to try WSL2, which is available if you subscribe to Windows Insider program, is the instability.

Some times, after an update, your WSL will not start. After some restarts everything is back to normal.

[Jonnax]

WSL2 became available outside of insider builds in version 1903 which came out May 2019.

I have not experienced WSL2 a not starting issue at all and I use it every day this year.

Also what benefit does Pengwin have apart from X server? I use the Ubuntu image and I've had no issues.

[rtodea]

For me it really helped to copy and paste the commands related to the X server.

For instance I had a small issue with the scale of the applications. In Windows I have 250% (recommended) scaling applied.

``` export QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2.5

export GDK_SCALE=$(echo "(${QT_SCALE_FACTOR} + 0.49) / 1" | bc) #Round ```

[neogodless]

Is the instability related to one of the above apps? I've been using WSL2 for at least six months without that issue.

[rtodea]

I don't think so.

I blame it on being on the Dev release channel.

To be honest I thought I had to be on the latest and greatest to take benefit of WSL2.

[Ayesh]

I sometimes get wsl2 to be not responsive too, but you can force shutdown ask (WSL --shutdown) that solves most problems except networking.