Hey there! I'm about to complete my first year of studying Computer Science coming in with almost zero background knowledge. In my DSA class, we were required to install a WSL environment (idk what they made Mac users do) and run VS Code through it for our projects.
I didn't even know what a terminal was before coming into college... so it didn't help that we weren't given an explanation for why this was required. We just did it. I do remember our project files breaking if we didn't run VS Code through WSL.
To note, I didn't even know what an IDE was until this year. I've never touched VS Code, so I don't know what it's like on Windows, nor do I know how different running it through WSL is.
So basically, my question is: what IS Linux? What are the advantages of using it? Furthermore, why WSL? What does this allow us to do that is more preferable than just using Windows? If anyone has further reading/media I would appreciate that as well.
EDIT: Thank you everyone for your responses! This is all so helpful and packed with information, I'm looking forward to exploring more!