WSL allows the running of a modified Linux environment (Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, and more) inside Windows 10. Unlike a virtual machine, it can directly interact with Windows files on the hard drive.
Main benefit: it's created by Microsoft, so it's more likely to be better supported. Benefits for the purposes of these scripts are the ability to keep dependencies (ffmpeg, atomicparsley, yt-dlp) up-to-date with package managers like apt or pip.
However the setup process does necessitate a relatively large one-time download and storing of WSL's files (approximately 2GB) - users taking issue with this may consider the other options such as Cygwin or Git Bash. [Compare the above here.](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1042285/reduce-size-of-a-wsl-installation-ubuntu-18-on-windows-10)
* The latest version of WSL (WSL2) stores the Linux filesystem hierarchy ( /* ) inside a virtual hard disk file. To avoid this file ballooning in size ([and having to manually shrink it in the future](https://stephenreescarter.net/how-to-shrink-a-wsl2-virtual-disk/)), it's recommended to store the scripts and videos outside of the Linux filesystem, inside a Windows drive (e.g. "/mnt/c/" for "C:\\", or "/mnt/d/" for a drive mounted at "D:\\" )
* Downloaded videos will likely exceed Windows' 260-character path length limit and not be playable out of the box. You should read more about [paths](docs/About-Paths.md) to familiarize yourself with the issue, as well as some potential workarounds.
Follow the "Manual Install" instructions in the [Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10).
Once WSL is installed, download the latest [release](https://github.com/TheFrenchGhosty/TheFrenchGhostys-YouTube-DL-Archivist-Scripts/releases) and follow the "Installation (Linux)" section of this README.
