Rebuild development environment with wsl2 + alacritty(Zellij)

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2023/9/152024/3/23
programming
3 min read

Actually, my development envrionment was broken when I was developing web application and updating my PC to Windows 11 for a week, ...and suddenly it said 'Goodbye'. My Windows PC is still Windows 10, definitely I failed updating OS in the fact.

I don't touch Windows PC much except to play games, somehow I want to write codes using by it. It was 100% a whim. That's why I started restoring the broken environment.

Reset Ubuntu App

At first, I need to reset Ubuntu application, so do by following these steps.

  1. Open the configration menu
  2. Go to the App & Functions page
  3. Search from the list, you fill ubuntu and find ubuntu app from here
  4. Click the target application and go to the detail
  5. Click the reset

Renew Ubuntu app

You already reset the old Ubuntu app, so you can create a new one on your PC, it should be the same as to buy new PC. very happy.

  1. Open the search window and fill in ubuntu
  2. Click the application, then start to create new ubuntu app. It's a very easy task
  3. Finally, you can check creation of the application
  4. Open PowerShell and type wsl -l -v then you can see the result as following
PS C:\Users\user1> wsl -l -v
  NAME                   STATE          VERSION
* docker-desktop-data    Stopped        2
  docker-desktop         Stopped        2
  Ubuntu                 Running        2

If you have time, it's better to change the default distribution to Ubuntu because the default of my env was docker-desktop-data.

wsl --set-default <virtual-environment-name>

PS C:\Users\user1> wsl --set-default Ubuntu
PS C:\Users\user1> wsl -l -v
  NAME                   STATE          VERSION
* Ubuntu                 Running        2
  docker-desktop         Stopped        2
  docker-desktop-data    Stopped        2

The reset process is now completed. So, let's get started to create new environment!

Set up new environment

Installation Alacritty

You can install the alacritty which is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but allows for extensive configrations.

After installing, you need to set configuration as follows:

  1. Execute Win + R, and search %appdata%
  2. Create alacritty directory and also create alacritty.yml which is configuration file for alacritty.
  3. Configure settings
# alacritty.yml
shell:
  program: "C:\\Windows\\System32\\wsl.exe ~ -d Ubuntu"
  args:
    - 'zellij attach --index 0 --create'

window:
  dimensions:
    columns: 200
    lines: 60
  padding:
    x: 8
    y: 4
  opacity: 0.95

selection:
  save_to_clipboard: true
  1. Then, you start up alacritty ( Don't forget to install Zellij beforehand. )