WSL VS vscodium

Compare WSL vs vscodium and see what are their differences.

WSL

Windows Subsystem for Linux (by microsoft)

vscodium

binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing (by VSCodium)
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WSL vscodium
432 565
29,109 27,841
3.9% 1.1%
9.2 9.6
5 days ago 8 days ago
C++ Shell
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

WSL

Posts with mentions or reviews of WSL. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-01.

vscodium

Posts with mentions or reviews of vscodium. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-05-05.
  • VSCodium – open-source Binaries of VSCode
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 May 2025
  • Why You Should Boycott VS Code
    3 projects | dev.to | 5 May 2025
    Visual Studio Code is distributed under the MIT license, a permissive license that allows you to do anything with the source code. This license is recognised by the OSI as an Open Source license. And quite predictably, a few forks of VSCode exists. VSCodium seems to be the most popular.
  • OpenVSX, which VSCode forks rely on for extensions, down for 24 hours
    16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2025
    Thanks, haven't tried it yet, but just found the relevant configuration settings described in the docs [0] and more detail on Stack Overflow [1].

    [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vsc...

    [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extension...

  • I just got an ad in VS Code
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Apr 2025
    A 1st party ad is still an ad, though in isolation I do I agree that it's quite mild all considered. With context however (this being Microsoft's doing, and all the AI/Adware/telemetry/darkpatterns they're cramming into everything), I share OP's derision for this development in a tool that has become a centerpiece for many developers workflows, dev environments, and ancillary (plugins) ecosystems.

    Thankfully, for now at least, VSCode is MIT Licensed [0], source available [1], and if built from source it does not include CoPilot, Telemetry or MS' other crapware or branding. VS Codium [2] compiles this source for you without the cruft and makes those binaries/installers available [3] if like.

    For those that like CoPilot, VSCodium even has a guide on how to add it to VSCodium/Source Built VSCode [4]

    0: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/LICENSE.txt

    1: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode

    2: https://vscodium.com/#why

    3: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases

    4: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1487

  • Microsoft C/C++ Extension appears no longer support unofficial forks of VS Code
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Apr 2025
  • Microsoft C/C++ Extension appears to no longer support unofficial VS Code forks
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Apr 2025
  • Xcode Constantly Phones Home
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Mar 2025
    Notably absent are all of the remote debugging extensions and Copilot. This would be a deal-breaker for many.

    [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/docs/index....

  • A Comment on Mozilla's Policy Changes
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Feb 2025
    Thanks, good spot.

    So Mozilla, an organisation that commends itself for working to put control of the internet back in the hands of the people using it, [0] is creating a situation where the FOSS community needs to maintain its own 'cleansed' builds, akin to VS Code/VS Codium [1] and, to a lesser extent, Chrome/Chromium. [2] (The Chromium case is somewhat different; Google maintains both the FOSS Chromium builds and the non-Free Chrome builds).

    4 years ago I commented that It's just non-stop with Mozilla, isn't it? They have the curious pairing of technical excellence, and a long history of awful non-technical decision-making. Little seems to have changed. [3]

    [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/

    [1] https://vscodium.com/

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

    [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26873740

  • I still like Sublime Text in 2025
    22 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Jan 2025
    I've been running vscodium for a couple of years now, and they rip out the MS specific stuff so no ChatGPT and so forth. I haven't noticed any slowdowns.

    Maybe give it a try? https://vscodium.com/

  • Ask HN: Open-Source editor with local code completion?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Jan 2025
    Continue [0] is open source and supports local models. I still haven't found time to try it out yet. If you host it in VSCodium [1], you would have pretty much what you asked for.

    [0] https://www.continue.dev/

    [1] https://vscodium.com/

What are some alternatives?

When comparing WSL and vscodium you can also consider the following projects:

Scoop - A command-line installer for Windows.

Code-Server - VS Code in the browser

wslg - Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios

theia - Eclipse Theia is a cloud & desktop IDE framework implemented in TypeScript.

tilt-extensions - Extensions for Tilt

Visual Studio Code - Visual Studio Code

InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
featured
Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
featured

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