Never mind Windows 11 , the latestversion of the Windows Subsystemfor Linux is where it’s atLINUX IN WINDOWSARE YOU PART OF the slightly sinister-sounding
Windows Insiders Program? Have you installed an even
more sinister-sounding Preview Build of Windows 10 (at
least build 20 262)? Then it’s easy to run Linux as part of
WSL 2.0: just open an administrator-privilege Windows
command prompt and run wsl --install. This also
works on Preview Builds of Windows 1 1. A few clicks
and pops and a restart later and you’ll be in business.
Actually, the GUI App Support download is pretty
large, so now might be a good time to make a cup of
tea. On your return, WSL, Microsoft’s Virtual Machine
Platform, their custom Linux Kernel and Ubuntu should
all have been downloaded. Other distros are available
and you can specify, for example, wsl--install -d Fedora
to install Fedora instead, or additionally if you already
have WSL Ubuntu installed. Users of non-Preview
Builds can either join the Insiders Program and upgrade
to one, or follow the manual installation steps below.
Start by firing up Administrator-powered PowerShell,
then acknowledging that the command line can get ugly
on Windows too, enter the incantation:
> dism.exe /online /enable-feature /
featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux/
all /norestart
This will install WSL 1, at which point you might wish
to reboot and play with that. Or you could continue to
get the latest incarnation. If you’re not running Build
18362 (check by running winver.exe) or higher (or
19041 or higher form ARM64) you’ll need to persuade
the Windows Update Assistant to get you there. To
enable WSL 2 we first must enable the Virtual Machine
Platform, which requires this line to be entered at anAdministrator PowerShell:
> dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Virt
ualMachinePlatform /all/norestart
One restart later and you’ll be running the subsystem
sequel. To get Microsoft’s latest frankenkernel,
download and run the package at https://
wslstorestorage.blob.core.windows.net/wslblob/
wsl_update_x64.msi. There’s a separate package for
ARM devices, so change x6 4 for arm64 in the previous
link if that applies to you. Before we get to installing
Linux we need to set WSL 2 as the default version from
PowerShell, easy enough:
>wsl --set-default-version 2
Then get over to the Microsoft Store (https://aka.ms/
wslstore) and install a distribution. The recognizable
versions are all free, but if you’re feeling flush you might
want to try the Microsoft Research’s WSL-tailored
Pengwin distro, currently on sale for about half of its
$20 price tag.CREATE A STANDALONE ACCOUNT
Whatever you choose, and however you got there, the
first step post-install is to follow the prompts and set
up a username and password. This is entirely unrelated
to any other accounts you have set up on Windows,
and also separate from WSL accounts set up by other
Windows users on the same machine. In other words,
WSL machines are effectively single-user affairs, since
they’re the concern of a single Windows user. Then
just as if it were a real Linux machine, you should do a
system update:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
Where you go from here is up to you. You could just
install Vim and the build-essentials package and get
hacking on your latest C project. Or you might want
to install the Nvidia Container Toolkit, which sets up
everything you need to run GPU accelerated DockerIt’s time to
upgrade
Windows 11, by
adding a Linux
kernel and some
Microsoft magicNow you can pore over logs and try and see
what went wrong with RDPLinux loves Windows