WSL 2 - Distro

Fedora

In this part, we’re setting up Fedora as our WSL distribution.

Info

Please also refer to Fedora’s official documentation

Install

Microsoft Store

If you can use the Microsoft Store, installing the Fedora distribution is as easy as installing the Fedora 42 app from the store.

Command line

wsl.exe --install FedoraLinux-42

Tar-based

Download the tarball from koji, then check your WSL version

wsl.exe --version

Info

The following part is mostly copy/pasted from the official documentation.

Version >= 2.4.4

1. From the command line, install the tarball with wsl --install --from-file .\path\to\Fedora.tar.xz

wsl.exe --install --from-file .\Fedora-WSL-Base-VERSION.x86_64.tar.xz 

2. Enter the environment by running

wsl.exe -d Fedora

3. When prompted, provide a username. This will be the default user, and it will be added to the groups for sudo usage.

Version < 2.4.4

(These steps assume you are using PowerShell)

1. Make a directory for the Fedora distribution with

mkdir $ENV:LOCALAPPDATA\WSL\Fedora

2. Import the WSL tarball with

wsl.exe --import Fedora $ENV:LOCALAPPDATA\WSL\Fedora .\Fedora-WSL-Base-VERSION.x86_64.tar.xz 

3. Enter the environment with

wsl.exe -d Fedora -u root

4. Manually run /usr/libexec/wsl/oobe.sh to create the default user
5. exit the environment logged in as root
6. Enter the environment as the newly created user with 

wsl.exe -d Fedora -u username

Set a password

Make sure to set a password for the newly created user. This should be self-explanatory from a security standpoint.

From within WSL, do

sudo passwd username

Set it as the default

If you don’t have any other distro installed, you won’t have to do anything.

If you do, however, and want to use the Fedora distro by default, just run the following

wsl.exe --set-default FedoraLinux-42

Just Works™?

Note

This should only be neccessary if you’re behind a (corporate) proxy.

As I’m sitting behind a corporate http proxy, I initially had no access to the internet.

This can be confirmed by running

curl https://fedoraproject.org

To make WSL proxy-aware, I needed to

1. Add the exports to the ~/.bashrc

~/.bashrc

PROXY_URL="http://<hostname>:<port>"
export all_proxy="$PROXY_URL"
export http_proxy="$PROXY_URL"
export https_proxy="$PROXY_URL"
export ftp_proxy="$PROXY_URL"
export no_proxy="127.0.0.1,0.0.0.0,localhost"
export ALL_PROXY="$PROXY_URL"
export HTTP_PROXY="$PROXY_URL"
export HTTPS_PROXY="$PROXY_URL"
export FTP_PROXY="$PROXY_URL"
export NO_PROXY="$no_proxy"

2. Source it

source ~/.bashrc

3. Allow sudo to pass these environment variables through by setting the env_keep property in /etc/sudoers.d/proxy

/etc/sudoers.d/proxy

Defaults env_keep += "all_proxy http_proxy https_proxy ftp_proxy no_proxy ALL_PROXY HTTP_PROXY HTTPS_PROXY FTP_PROXY NO_PROXY"

Rerunning the curl-command should now produce a response, and your system should update just fine.

NixOS

In this part, we’re setting up NixOS as our WSL distribution.

Info

Please also refer to the Official NixOS-WSL documentation.

Install

First download the latest nixos.wsl from the NixOS-WSL GitHub release page.

Simply double click the file or run

wsl.exe --install --from-file nixos.wsl

Replace

• nixos.wsl: Path to your downloaded nixos.wsl

Afterwards you get dropped into NixOS.

Tip

When immediately bootstrapping a config like I do with my WSL 2 - Distro, you don’t need to update the system using channels (despite the welcome message telling you)!

Set it as the default

If you don’t have any other distro installed, you won’t have to do anything.

If you do, however, and want to use the NixOS distro by default, just run the following

wsl.exe --set-default NixOS

Nix(OS) & Home-Manager config

I have my own dendritic nix-config that manages my complete system and home level configuration for different hosts, users, etc.

Tip

This completely replaces any manual configuration I previously did in my Dotfiles setup.

Bootstrap

1. Rebuild the boot instead of directly switching to it

   sudo nixos-rebuild boot --flake github:DustVoice/nix-config#hostname

Replace

• hostname: The machine’s hostname, defined in modules/my/hosts

2. Exit the WSL shell and terminate the distro

   wsl.exe -t NixOS

3. Start a shell as the root user and immediately exit, applying the new generation

   wsl.exe -d NixOS --user root exit

4. Stop the distro again

   wsl.exe -t NixOS

5. Finally open a WSL shell with (hopefully) everything applied.

NOTE

This of course doesn’t transfer any files from the nixos user’s home directory to the newly created user!

Just Works™?

Note

This should only be neccessary if you’re behind a (corporate) proxy.

As I’m sitting behind a corporate http proxy, I initially had no access to the internet.

This can be confirmed by running

curl https://nixos.org

Another symptom is that the previous bootstrap command hangs indefinitely.

Environment Variables

Should not be needed!

This should not be necessary if the WSL Settings are set correctly. Modern Windows 11 installations should include the WSL Settings application, where you can manage the %USERPROFILE%\.wslconfig file graphically.

Make sure that the automatic proxy configuration under the Network tab is turned on. Alternatively, especially if you’re on an older WSL version, where this option isn’t enabled by default, you can simply modify the %USERPROFILE\.wslconfig to include autoProxy=true under the [wsl] section.

You therefore only need to follow the WSL 2 - Distro section down below once while bootstrapping. After that my config sets correct env_keep values.

To circumvent this, we (redundantly) export local environment variables first:

proxy_url="PROXY-URL"
export http_proxy="$proxy_url"
export https_proxy="$proxy_url"
export HTTP_PROXY="$proxy_url"
export HTTPS_PROXY="$proxy_url"

Preserve Environment

Unfortunately there is only a limited set of environment variables which get copied over by sudo!

This might be wise from a security standpoint but is annoying in this case. To circumvent this, add --preserve-env=http_proxy,https_proxy,HTTP_PROXY,HTTPS_PROXY, or even simpler -E (which preserves all of the user’s environment variables, which is fine for this one-time usage) as an argument to sudo:

Modified bootstrap command

sudo -E nixos-rebuild switch --flake github:DustVoice/nix-config#hostname

Replace

• hostname: The machine’s hostname, defined in modules/my/hosts

This should run without problem and the proxy environment variables should be correctly set now and after reboots, together with the env_keep configuration of sudo, so you can emit the -E flag down the line.