WSL or Virtualization?

If you are using WSL, you need an X server like XMinG otherwise you won't be able to use any graphical applications. I have been using WSL for 5 months now: haven't found any restrictions yet.

Start xming, start wsl - you have a choice of Ubuntu or SuSE, modify your .profile Add

export DISPLAY=:0.0

exit WSL console. Start WSL console again. Check the value of $DISPLAY. It should be :0.0. You can run a simple gui test like xeyes. You can access the windows disk from /mnt/c and any USB device from /media/ . WSL is great for all sorts except playing with networks. If you wish to have different IP addresses and mess with Windows/Linux networks, use VMWare.

If you are on the professional windows vesion, you can also use hyperv - you will need to add it to your windows configuration first. Once it is up, you can create a VM. I have never used this for networks so I don't know how networks behave with hyperv.

VMWare - you can use it with Workstation Player. Navigating through VMWare's pages to find it is quite something. Always takes me ages. It sets up extra drivers: one for host only networking, one for NAT. By default the networking is NAT (local network with the host). You can go for bridged if you want a separate network address. The problem here is deciding what size disk you want when creating the VM. With WSL, there is no restriction. VMs are like physical computers. If you are just playing around, 60Gb would be sufficient. Make sure you choose the 2Gb split version when creating the disk otherwise you will find it difficult to move the VM anywhere. Files bigger than 2Gb don't copy very well to USB devices or over the network.

If you make a copy of the VM, on startup, it will ask you whether you moved it or copied it. To avoid network conflicts, always say copied, otherwise if you start up two copies, there will be a network clash.

Some people prefer virtualbox to VMWare. I find it a bit clunky after having used VMWare for 7 years but it has revision control snapshots which VMWare Player does not have. You have to upgrade to VMWare Workstation for that and it costs $$$. The good thing about VMs, is you don't necessarily need to shut down: just suspend and the next time (maybe 6 months or 4 years later), restart and you'll be exactly where you left off. Great when you're learning stuff.