See the Best practices for setting up a WSL development environment guide to learn more. Once you have installed WSL, you will need to create a user account and password for your newly installed Linux distribution. You can also create your own custom Linux distribution to use with WSL.

Or in some cases, as with Arch Linux, you can install using an. To install a Linux distribution that is not listed as available, you can import any Linux distribution using a TAR file.

If you run into an issue during the install process, check the installation section of the troubleshooting guide. exe in the command: wsl.exe -install -d or to list available distributions: wsl.exe -l -o.

If you want to install additional distributions from inside a Linux/Bash command line (rather than from PowerShell or Command Prompt), you must use. All future launches should take less than a second. The first time you launch a newly installed Linux distribution, a console window will open and you'll be asked to wait for files to de-compress and be stored on your machine. If you're running an older build, or just prefer not to use the install command and would like step-by-step directions, see WSL manual installation steps for older versions. ( This default distribution can be changed). This command will enable the features necessary to run WSL and install the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. Open PowerShell or Windows Command Prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and selecting 'Run as administrator', enter the wsl -install command, then restart your machine. You can now install everything you need to run WSL with a single command. If you are on earlier versions please see the manual install page. You must be running Windows 10 version 2004 and higher (Build 19041 and higher) or Windows 11 to use the commands below. The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets developers install a Linux distribution (such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Kali, Debian, Arch Linux, etc) and use Linux applications, utilities, and Bash command-line tools directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dualboot setup. Developers can access the power of both Windows and Linux at the same time on a Windows machine.

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