Currently I have an old Mac at work, which will be replaced by a Windows computer. They are administered by an external company, who are usually forthcoming but sometimes slow. I will ask for local admin privileges, maybe get, maybe not. Regardless of who administers the computer afterwards, I’d prefer the service company to handle the initial setup. For future use, it is desirable that I can perform updates on my own.
About myself: I prefer GUI whenever possible, but not afraid of (unix) CLI. Have zero experience with Win11, but have done some light administrative tasks on Win10. Never used WSL and know little about it. Currently, I use Google Antigravity IDE with Kaimon.jl for Julia programming. (Julia) programming is not the main part of my work.
Now - what should I ask for? The main question - should I ask them to install Julia and tools within WSL, natively under Windows, or both? Also - if there are any other specific points to pay attention to?
Natively on Windows. Plus VSCode and the Julia plugin for VSCode, unless you prefer something else. But it depends. Using GUI software on WSL is complicated, and I assume you want at least to create some plots.
The point is, even if they install juliaup (which you get when you install Julia via the Windows Store) and the latest version of Julia, you still need to be able to install packages yourself. And that is where it gets tricky, depending on your company’s firewall rules.
By the way, normally you do not need admin permissions to install Julia.
I always tell my students also to install Git for Windows. If you do serious programming you need Git, otherwise not.
I use Win11 both at home and at work. My employer has tight security controls on software. I use VSCode and I need IT support to install every VSCode update. However, I can install packages without difficulty using Pkg and can use juliaup to update Julia, too, without any need for IT support.
I’m afraid I don’t know. For the first two years of use, VSCode updated all by itself. Then, a few months ago, IT tightened the screw and now I need them to make the updates. I don’t know which screw they tightened, though.
Code, running under WSL might be faster than under Windows directly, in particular if it does many operations on small files. But that is useful only if you operate a webserver or something similar.
It might be good for learning how to use the command line and the file system structure of Linux.
If you install Git for Windows, you also have a Bash shell on Windows without using WSL. I need that, because even for launching Julia I use a Bash script.
Note that WSL Ubuntu LTS has Tier 2 Julia support. Native Windows has Tier 1.
Tier 1: Julia is guaranteed to build from source and pass all tests on these platforms when built with the default options. Official binaries are always available and CI is run on every commit to ensure support is actively maintained.
Tier 2: Julia is guaranteed to build from source using the default build options, but may or may not pass all tests. Official binaries are available on a case-by-case basis.
OK, I think the WSL question is closed, except there is some other specific argument for it. BTW even though I’m “married” to Mac (which is unix) since decades, I am a digitally non-binary person and also have a dual-boot Win10/Ubuntu box at home.
I have Win 11 with WSL installed. I use Julia exclusively under Win 11. I have another C program originally written with a 16 bit compiler that I have managed to update to compile under Linux but not under Windows. (I only have limited C experience). I have also done some work using sed to convert an ASCII file to Latex. UNIX is much richer with tools like this. And the odd time I use Linux command line tools where they are more convenient than either a GUI interface or DOS tools.
There is no harm in having WSL. If anything along the lines of the above apply, it can make life easier.