Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a fantastic Dev and Test environment, providing seamless integration for Linux apps and shells running on Windows 10. This post is a quick summary of the manual steps to enable WSL2 in Windows 10.
Windows Insider Builds
At the time of writing, Microsoft is making it much simpler to install and enable WSL2 using a single command. This option is only available in Insider Builds 20262 and higher.
wsl --install
For the stable release versions of Windows 10, the following manual steps are required.
Enable virtualization support
This is separate to the Hyper-V optional feature, but does use the same architecture.
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart
Enable WSL feature
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
WSL kernel update package
This is required because Microsoft removed the previously included Linux kernel from Windows. It now gets updated and patched through Windows Update
Download and install the update package
Set the default version
Make sure everything is version 2
wsl --set-default-version 2
Install the required distro
Ubuntu is the most reliable on Windows at the time of writing
Create username
Start the distro from the Start Menu shortcut. When prompted, specify a username and password.
The user is automatically added to the Sudo group.
Update packages in the distro
Launch Ubuntu and start a terminal shell
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Check you are running version 2
Windows 10 PowerShell:
wsl --list -v
NAME STATE VERSION
* docker-desktop-data Running 2
Ubuntu-20.04 Running 2
docker-desktop Running 2
Location of the .vhdx file
The virtual disk containing the Linux OS is located here:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState\ext4.vhdx
This article was originally posted on Write-Verbose.com