On the Symfony Finland site there's a new article posted talking about the use of the Windows subsystem for Linux, an environment that allows for the execution of Linux binaries in a Windows environment.

Windows has always been somewhat of an oddball when it comes to PHP development. In the past years it has lost out on developer mindshare to UNIX-like Operating Systems like Linux and macOS.

With the release of Windows 10 Anniversary Update in August 2016 Microsoft now offers an interesting option for PHP development in the Windows environment: The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). The Windows Subsystem for Linux allows the execution of Linux binaries in Windows 10. The feature is not enabled by default and is targeted for developers.

They show you how to get into the Linux-compatible shell on your Windows system after enabling it in your System Settings. From there, he says, it's basically like working in a Linux-based server and includes some of the actions he took (including installing PHP 7, Symfony and Composer). He also shows the integration the environment has back with the Windows system including access to local drives (but that there's still some tricky bits involved in using them).