Linux on Windows? WSL Makes it as Easy as on a Chromebook

I finally got Beads working on Windows… sort of.

The trick? I used WSL.

I hadn’t tried to do serious work on Windows in quite a while, so I was genuinely surprised to discover that WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) just worked.

I’d been struggling with Beads—a system that helps to automate workflows for LLM agents by essentially creating revision controlled context for them—for several days. Some of the things Beads wanted simply weren’t available on Windows. The big one was tmux (which I also needed for Gastown). I spent about three days fighting with that.

Then I finally took the plunge and went all-in on WSL.

And… it just worked.

It worked especially well combined with OpenAI Codex. From WSL/Linux, I can fire up Codex CLI and tell it to install things for me. No worrying about which Windows installer to use. No chasing down extra packages. Everything just works. Need ffmpeg and Gimp? You need merely ask..

I did have to start Codex CLI with:

codex --yolo

Then, with basic sudo privileges, it just heads out and makes things work.

Do I feel safe doing the codex --yolo thing? Honestly, thanks to building a solid revision-control habit in GitHub over the last several years… yes. Yes, I do.

So if you’d have an easier time working on a Linux box, but you’re stuck on a Windows machine for whatever reason, give WSL a serious look.

I'm off to wor more with gastown.

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