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Installing WSL

What is WSL​

The Windows Subsystem for Linux lets developers run a GNU/Linux environment -- including most command-line tools, utilities, and applications -- directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dualboot setup.

You can:

  • Choose your favorite GNU/Linux distributions from the Microsoft Store.
  • Run common command-line tools such as grep, sed, awk, or other ELF-64 binaries.
  • Run Bash scripts and GNU/Linux command-line applications including:
  • Tools: vim, emacs, tmux
  • Languages: NodeJS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, C/C++, C# & F#, Rust, Go, etc.
  • Services: SSHD, MySQL, Apache, lighttpd, MongoDB, PostgreSQL.
  • Install additional software using your own GNU/Linux distribution package manager.
  • Invoke Windows applications using a Unix-like command-line shell.
  • Invoke GNU/Linux applications on Windows.
  • Run GNU/Linux graphical applications integrated directly to your Windows desktop
  • Use GPU acceleration for machine learning, data science scenarios and more

Installing WSL​

to install WSL on windows 11 open powershell as administrator and run this command

wsl --install
info

before running this command make sure you have at least 10 GB free space on drive C

info

by default wsl installs latests version on Ubuntu

try running wsl --list --online to see a list of available distros and run wsl --install -d <DistroName> to install a distro.

CLI Commands​

WSL 2 CLI Cheat-sheet To Be Run In Powershell

To list installed distributions​

wsl -l
# or
wsl --list

To list installed distributions along with its running status and wsl config being 1 or 2​

wsl -l --verbose
# or
wsl -l -v

To run a specific distro​

wsl -d distro_name
# or
wsl --distribution distro_name

To terminate/shutdown a specific distro​

wsl -t distro_name_to_shutdown
# or
wsl --terminate distro_name_to_shutdown

To shutdown all disstros​

wsl --shutdown

Set specific distro as default​

wsl -s my_default_distro
wsl --set-default my_default_distro

To EXPORT a running distro as image​

wsl --export distro_name_to_export windows_path\tar_file_name.tar

To IMPORT an image as distro​

wsl --import new_distro_name install_location_windows_path tar_file_name.tar --version wsl-version-1-or-2
wsl --import Ubuntu-20 D:\VMs\WSL\Ubuntu-20\ Ubuntu-20.04.tar --version 2 # Setting my secondary HDD as storate loc for new distro

To UNREGISTER (also removes the its file storage) a distro​

wsl --unregister distro_name_that_delete
danger

THIS OPERATION IS NOT REVERSIABLE

Online Documentation​

to see latest version of WSL documentation please visit here