What's the difference between Git bash and WSL

Question

I just installed Git SCM on my Windows machine. My machine had Node installed earlier. I am able to use node -v in git bash. But, Why I am able to use windows applications inside Git Bash and not in WSL Bash.

Inside WSL Bash-

hello@comp:~$ node -v

Command 'node' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install nodejs

Inside Git Bash-

hello@comp MINGW64 
$ node -v
v12.10.0

Answer 1

WSL is an a Linux like compatibility layer. You run Linux applications on top of WSL and they think they are running natively on Linux while the system calls are being translated to Windows OS system calls (WSL2 -- not yet released -- is a full Linux kernel running inside Windows). You do get to access Windows files through /mnt/c/... but that's about all you can expect in terms of Windows-Linux interoperability.

Git-bash, on the other hand, is a Windows app -- a shell running windows applications. Some of these may be compiled with a Linux compatibility library (Cygwin). But they don't have to be. This provides a less "Linux-like" experience but may be a good compromise if all you want are some Linux command line tools and don't need to install full-blown Linux executables.

Answer 2

Definition of PATH for both "environments" is different. Check that node's dir shows up on Git bash's and not in WSL Bash. Run this on both environments:

echo $PATH