WSL 2 - Kernel

This topic concerns mainly WSL 2 itself, or in more precise terms, the WSL kernel, which is technically a separate part from the WSL distribution, although many people mangle the terminology.

As I will usually install a different distro than the default (Ubuntu), I won’t bother with that particular part of Microsoft’s official documentation and only install the bare kernel in this note.

Requirements

This is obsolete

It seems as if you don’t longer need to manually enable the Windows Feature, as this comment suggests.

I’ll still leave the following info intact because we all know what beautiful, reliable and stable pieces of software Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Store are… sarcasm.delete();

You might want to enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux Windows feature. You can either try opening your Windows Search and searching for Turn Windows features on or off, or you can dig your way through the Control Panel.

Note

For WSLg to work properly, you need to make sure you’re running Windows 11, or the minimum required version of Windows 10 (Version 2004 or higher / Build 19041 or higher).

Install / Update WSL

Info

Microsoft recommends installing the Distro from the Microsoft store, but also specifies the commands below in their official documentation.

In my experience, depending on your installation, or whether your Microsoft Store has shot itself in the foot yet, the installation is a little incoherent.

When in doubt, use the official Microsoft installation documentation.

To install WSL from a cmd.exe-prompt or PowerShell run (with elevated privileges)

wsl.exe --install --no-distribution

or if you’ve already installed WSL in the past, run (also from an elevated prompt)

wsl.exe --update

Just Works™?

Note

This should only be neccessary if your Windows is locked down, the Microsoft Store is disabled, or similar.

As it turns out, if you’re in a pretty restricting corporate setting, the Windows environment is somewhat … let’s say botched. The only way I was able to install WSL successfully, was by using the manual installation method.

1. Download the latest WSL release (the .msixbundle)
2. Install it by running Add-AppxPackage Microsoft.WSL_{version}_{arch}.msixbundle
3. Proceed with the setting up the distribution

Tip

If wsl --update doesn’t work (in addition to wsl --install [...]), you might need to repeat this ordeal when you want to update WSL.