WSL2 Desktop location confusion

[caseyyoungflesh]

How could the content be improved?

Teaching a recent workshop, finding the location of the Desktop (where learners place the example data) on WSL2 machines was an issue. The instructor/helper team were not WSL2 users and finding the Desktop in these cases took quite a bit of time. This directory mapping is a major downside of WSL2 IMO, but I understand it might be a better option than the alternative.

I suggest adding in some blurb directly into the lessons, maybe 02-filedir near L588, making it clear where the Desktop is for WSL2. My understanding is that it should be in /mnt/c/Users/<YourUsername>/Desktop for everyone (though someone correct me if I'm wrong). A symlink could be create to simplify things but I think instructors would need to set this up, making it a less than ideal solution.

Happy to put in a pull request.

Which part of the content does your suggestion apply to?

No response

[caseyyoungflesh]

Relatedly, more issues arise when using WSL2 (rather not installing Git Bash) in the Git lesson if folks are trying to using Git with RStudio (one of the most useful things people will learn IMO). If Git is only in the VM through WSL2, they won't have it on their machine and RStudio won't find the GIt program. That is, if folks are going to use WSL2, they should also install Git Bash if they want to use Git through RStudio

[scottcpeterson]

This is the message that we have been putting into the etherpad along with the file paths in a slide when we teach the Shell lesson, as we have had problems with learners not being able to find their Desktop when OneDrive is installed,

Windows OneDrive problem with finding Deskstop

If a Windows machine is backed up with enterprise OneDrive, their GUI desktop may be rendered from a folder within OneDrive, which will not match the contents of ~/Desktop. The OneDrive desktop should be accessible using one of the following commands (if the name of the enterprise isn’t clear, look through the output of ls to find the right folder):

BASH Command:
$ cd "~/OneDrive - Name Of Enterprise/Desktop"
$ cd "C:/Users/Username/OneDrive - Name Of Enterprise/Desktop"

One way to spot if the computer is using this kind of configuration is to look at files, folders or links on the desktop. Usually the icon contains a shortcut/arrow symbol if it is a link, or just the plain icon if the file is just saved in the Desktop folder. Files synced with OneDrive contain an additional symbol indicating the sync status (typically blue arrows for ‘sync pending’ or a green tick for ‘synced’).

[bkmgit]

@scottcpeterson Could you also examine #1480 ?Feedback would be helpful.

[scottcpeterson]

It looks like the same message I just posted was posted by Jennifer Stubbs on 2/25/25 here:
#1398

It seems like there are three issues open around this problem at the moment.

[bkmgit]

I do not use Windows or OneDrive, so cannot test it out.
If you have any suggestions to modify it, happy to add those, but if it is sufficient, happy to merge.

Thanks for opening LibraryCarpentry/lc-shell#299

[scottcpeterson]

I have a Mac, though it does have OneDrive on it, as my institution is a Microsoft institution, but I don't have any problems since my OneDrive is just a directory on my machine and not set up to mirror my machine. The OneDrive directory does not have a Desktop in it, and everything I download goes to my Mac. I can navigate to my OneDrive directory, but I don't think this is how Windows machines are set up for the learners having problems finding the shell-lesson-data folder. I can see if I can get a colleague to test the

[omsai]

For the reasons @caseyyoungflesh describes I would suggest using Git Bash instead of WSL2. This is a larger conversation we need to have in the Carpentries because working with WSL brings many headaches of upgrading from WSL1 to WSL2, the administrative privileges involves with WSL work, the differences in directories, etc.

[froggleston]

We have recently reverted the workshop-template instructions to recommend Git Bash, and only use WSL2 if the instructors/hosts can ensure learners are comfortable, have the appropriate hardware and Windows version, and make clear that WSL2 is more likely to be a good next step for learners wanting to use a more native Linux environment rather than Git Bash's "walled garden" environment.