How to Enable and Install WSL on a Windows Computer

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature that allows users to run Linux distributions on a Windows Computer. In this post, we’ll show you how to enable and install WSL on your Windows computer.

Enabling WSL

Before you can install a WSL distribution, you need to enable the WSL feature on your Windows machine. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the Start menu and search for “Turn Windows features on or off”.
2. In the Windows Features window, scroll down and find “Windows Subsystem for Linux”.
3. Check the box next to “Windows Subsystem for Linux” and click “OK”.
4. Follow the prompts to install the feature.

Installing a WSL Distribution

Once you have enabled the WSL feature, you can install a WSL distribution on your Windows machine. There are several distributions available, including Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS. In this example, we’ll show you how to install Ubuntu.

1. Open the Microsoft Store and search for “Ubuntu”.
2. Click on the “Ubuntu” app and click “Get”.
3. Follow the prompts to install the app.
4. Once the installation is complete, click the “Launch” button to open the Ubuntu terminal.

Using WSL

Now that you have WSL enabled and a distribution installed, you can start using it on your Windows machine. You can use the WSL terminal to run Linux commands and scripts, or you can use it to develop and test Linux applications.

To open the WSL terminal, you can use the Start menu or the wsl command in a PowerShell terminal. From the terminal, you can use Linux commands and tools as you would on a native Linux machine.

That’s all there is to it! With WSL enabled and a distribution installed, you can start using Linux on your Windows machine. If you have any questions or need more information, you can refer to the Microsoft documentation on WSL.