Yet another note for myself, for the next time I have to set up WSL2 on a Windows computer. I’ve taken the time to give it a bit of format so you may follow the steps too.

Install WSL

To install the original WSL, it’s as easy as going to the Windows Store and searching for “wsl”. I personally installed the Ubuntu flavour. You will probably need to enable the feature in Windows before installing. For that simply run in PS:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Installing WSL 2

To access WSL2, as of March 2020, it’s slightly tricker: you have to opt-in the Insiders Program and get the most recent OS build, Windows 10 version 2004. To do that, follow this link.

Once you’ve registered in the Insider’s program, you need to enable it in the OS in order for Windows to download the latest updates. You can do that in Settings> Update & Security> Windows Insider Program. Make sure you tick those boxes, restart the system, and after that Windows will suggest downloading the latest build under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

Next, to manually update the WSL 2 Linux kernel, download the following package and run it - link

Lastly, once that’s that, following the official instruction, run:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

Set the default version to 2

wsl --set-default-version 2

And your Ubuntu WSL to version 2 too:

wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2

To verify that all is in order, run: wsl --list --verbose

The Extra Mile: Configuring IDEs

This is the easies step, assuming you’ve already set Ubuntu as your default WSL with:

C:\Windows\System32\wslconfig /setdefault Ubuntu-18.04

For configuring any IDE to use WSL instead of CMD, point the terminal to the path:

C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe

In the case of Jetbrains products, you can find that under Settings > Tools > Terminal. This is the original source.