WSL enables Windows computers to concurrently run Windows and Linux at the same time. Modern software development and deployment usually depends on Linux tools and commands. To be able to run a Linux container on a Windows workstation, we need the availability of the Linux Kernel.
To install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with the default Ubuntu distribution
- Open a PowerShell terminal as Administrator and execute the command
wsl --install
To install another distribution
- Open a PowerShell terminal as Administrator and execute the command to get the list of available distributions
wsl.exe --list --online - Install the desired distribution
wsl --install -d MY_DISTRIBUTION_NAME
Reboot the computer for the changes to take effect.