If you’re using GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code on Windows, you may have noticed that the default terminal is PowerShell (PS).

While that works fine for many developers, I personally find it a bit unfamiliar, especially when I’m more used to working in a Linux environment like Debian or Ubuntu. Common commands like ls, nano, or even piping with grep just don’t feel as seamless in PowerShell.

So, I looked for a way to make my VS Code terminal behave like Linux without leaving Windows. The answer? WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

This was a small tweak that made a big difference in my workflow. I use Debian in WSL, and I wanted every terminal in my projects to open directly in Debian, not PowerShell.

After browsing through the official VS Code documentation and a few GitHub threads, I found a simple solution: just modify the .code-workspace file used for your project.

Here’s how my example.code-workspace file looks after I updated it:

The key line is "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "Debian (WSL)". This tells VS Code to default to the Debian profile we define below, which launches wsl.exe with the -d Debian argument.

This ensures the terminal inside VS Code uses your Debian WSL instance. Of course, make sure you’ve already installed Debian (or Ubuntu) via the Microsoft Store or by manually importing a WSL image.

Why does this matter? Because when working with GitHub Copilot, and especially when running Node.js apps, Strapi, or Bash scripts, the experience feels far more seamless in a native Linux environment.

I don’t run into annoying errors because rm doesn’t exist or because shell scripts break under PowerShell syntax. It just works, exactly how I expect it to.

Here are a few references that helped me:

• VSCode Docs – Terminal Profiles
• Microsoft WSL Documentation
• Various GitHub Copilot discussions around terminal integration

If you want to make this change globally for all projects, not just a specific workspace—you can also add the same settings to your global settings.json in VS Code. Just press Ctrl + ,, click the icon for “Open Settings (JSON)”, and paste the same config under your user settings.

Now, every time I open a terminal in VS Code, it drops me straight into my Debian WSL instance. It’s fast, familiar, and works beautifully with Copilot.

In my opinion, it’s the best of both worlds, the power of Linux development, running inside the comfort of a Windows setup.