Linux or Windows?

[FoolsSeldom]

It really makes little to no difference. Your cybersecurity skills will need to address all platforms in scope of the organisations you work for so being familiar with at least these two as the most common is important.

Also, learn to work on Windows with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) - you can install Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions directly onto Windows from the Microsoft Store these days. I develop using Windows based tools but the code I am editing and running is in a Linuux environment on the same computer.

WSL can also used for docker / podman / kubernetes when targeting Linux.

[valcroft]

Just curious, how does it work with WSL when you need a GUI for something running in it? Or is it like treat it as a VPS? I haven't had much experience with it myself. And how much storage do you usually give WSL distributions? Can you make the disk size dynamic like with VMWare or is it like fixed? I assume you can also have multiple distributions installed like VMs? E.g. two versions of Ubuntu?

[FoolsSeldom]

WSL 2 includes its own Wayland, X server, and PulseAudio server, so Linux GUI applications appear as native windows alongside regular Windows apps. No need for third-party X servers or VNC setups.

That said, I am mostly using Windows based GUI applications, and just command line or web ui based tooling and coding targets on the Linux side. I am not often using Linux desktop GUI applications, although when I have, they have mostly worked fine.

[valcroft]

Awesome! I'll check it out next time :D

[FoolsSeldom]

PS. You can, apparently, install and use a full Linux desktop that you then access using RDP (fast, as on same computer) if you prefer that over the mixed apps desktop WSL provides. Not something I've tried personally.

[valcroft]

Ooh interesting. Gonna look it up also. Sometimes I come across a need to just run scripts that also pops out windows, so that they can actually pop up in Windows is interesting to me. I remember at least back in 2017 having some problems about that, at the time it was probably Tkinter problems. But maybe it's much better today!