WSL 2 (short for "Windows Subsystem for Linux 2") allows users to build and run Linux applications within their Windows environment. This is a great alternative to students who have no interest in setting up a dual boot of Windows and a Linux distro.
First, we need to enable two different features: HyperV and WSL 2 itself. Open PowerShell as an administrator and running the following commands:
dism.exe /online /enable-feature
/featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart dism.exe
/online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all
/norestart
Restart your computer to complete the feature enable process.
To ensure your distros are run with WSL 2 instead of WSL 1, run
wsl --set-default-version 2. If it prints "WSL 2 requires an
update to its kernel component", download and run the MSI installer at
https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel.
If you already have distros using WSL 1, you can convert them with
wsl --set-version distro-name-here 2 where "distro-name-here"
is the distro name from wsl --list.
Next, you can open up the Microsoft Store WSL page and select a distro you wish to install We recommend using Ubuntu, the latest version will work fine. To install, press the "Get" button. Please note a Microsoft account is required to download.
Once it's finished, launch the WSL app from the Start Menu. A terminal window will open and ask for a new username and password if being used for the first time. Set them to your preference, but choose a password you will remember as it will be needed when performing some commands like installing any packages.
Congrats! Your new WSL 2 system is ready to be used.
See Ubuntu tools installation.
Since WSL 2 runs seperately from base Windows, a seperate extension is
needed for VSCode to have the ability of accessing WSL 2 file system. This
extension can be downloaded by opening Quick Search (Ctrl+P) and typing in:
ext install ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl to install it.