How to enable the Linux / Bash subsystem in Windows 10

It isn't really ready for general use yet. It can't even run something as simple as an irc client without failing. https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/262

I uninstalled it and went back to cygwin, which is the only real option for now besides running a VM.

Fwiw I wouldn't consider something like irssi / weechat "simple", especially if it's doing something like drawing a ui. Something like curl, jq, awk, grep, sed etc would be useful to have on Windows and should be more compatible from the shell standpoint. Not sure where they're at in terms of xterm compatibility or similar but I'm guessing that's further down the line.

Have you tried msys2/ming? Cmder.exe? Pretty good stuff if you're looking for a close Linux command line experience on Windows.

There's a video at the bottom of a blog post that was linked to from this article that does a pretty great job of explaining the subsystem for Linux: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

You can also use other Unix shells if that's your thing. I personally use zsh and it works great.