How Windows is Useful: Enabling Windows Subsystem for Linux

2026-03-26 6 minute read 0 Comments #linux | #windows

It ‘twas the morning of July 18, 2019 as I was working on this site; just polishing up a few tidbits, when my 2012 Macbook Pro became quite warm and decided to poweroff, never to return again. About 30 minutes had past while I aimlessly troubleshot, but ultimately I found myself on Apple’s support site scheduling an appointment to have my laptop serviced.

My initial thought after setting up my appointment:

Que sera sera! I get a little vacation from technology, wonderful!

😁😁😁
It was soon after that thought that another had occured to me; which came as quite a surprise.
😁😁😁

What if I come up with an amazing, life altering, idea that required the use of my most familiar working enivironment - a terminal (iterm2) and my precious dotfiles (nothing too crazy), git, vim, and maybe a few others.

It was the very next moment when I found myself gazing across the room towards my desk, taking notice to my Windows 10 desktop. The desktop was not used often so it only had a modest amount of dust on it, but its initial and main purpose is to serve as a decent gaming rig; now (NOW…) though, it had to elevate its purpose to new heights.

But wait… its Windows 10, and I favor a Unix-like terminal environment with vim and bash; while this dusty machine could offer me… what? Notepad and PowerShell.

Oh, but wait… I remember some mentions from a couple years back of Windows 10 offering an embedded Ubuntu Linux; perhaps there is some saving grace after all.

Thus, my journey begun… and here within this blog, I will detail my findings in hopes that it may bring another hope in a similar time of need.

Enabling Windows Subsystem for Linux

Install the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Open PowerShell as an Administrator and run:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Restart your computer when prompted.

Install your Linux Distribution of Choice

There are a few choices for installing Linux on your Windows 10 machine:

Download and install from the Microsoft Store
Download and install from the Command-Line/Script
Download and manually unpack and install (for Windows Server)

I chose the first option - Download and install from the Microsoft Store.

The list of distributions available to install was quite surprising; to name a few - SUSE, Debian, and Kali Linux were among others on the list. For the task at hand, I decided to install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic) from the Microsoft Store

Opening the Microsoft Store, searching for “Ubuntu”, and selecting “Install” was the minimal effort I needed to put in to begin the download and install process.

Once the install completed, the option to “Launch” was available and I did what came naturally next - I clicked “Launch”.

A seemingly familiar black backgrounded terminal appeared on my screen:

Installing, this may take a few minutes...
Please create a default UNIX user account. The username does not need to match your Windows username.
For more information visit: https://aka.ms/wslusers
Enter new UNIX username: mhassel
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Installation successful!
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo ".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

Ah’mazing! Ubuntu running on Windows 10! BTW… the Ubuntu terminal window has opacity built-in; I like to rock it at 80%.

After making sure I was on the latest and greatest:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

I was back!

I was finally up and running; and just needed to apply my dotfiles, and install nvm and a few other tools. I could head back to the couch, no longer worried that I may miss out on pursuing the most amazing idea if it would come to me.

And then Matthew stood up, walked to his desktop, and began writing this post...

Reference: Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10

2026 Update: WSL2 and Windows 11

The steps above describe WSL1, which was state-of-the-art when I wrote this in 2019. Since then, Microsoft has released WSL2 — a significant architectural improvement — and made it the default on Windows 10 (version 2004 and later) and Windows 11.

What Changed: WSL1 vs WSL2

Feature	WSL1	WSL2
Architecture	Translation layer	Full Linux kernel (VM)
File system performance	Fast for Windows FS	Fast for Linux FS
System call compatibility	Partial	Full
Docker support	Limited	Native
GPU support	No	Yes (with WSL2 GPU)
Startup time	Instant	~1-2 seconds

The headline improvement: WSL2 runs a real Linux kernel inside a lightweight VM, which means it is fully compatible with software like Docker, systemd, and complex build tools that WSL1 struggled with.

Installing WSL2 Today (Windows 10/11)

Microsoft has simplified installation dramatically. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

wsl --install

This single command installs WSL2, downloads the default distribution (Ubuntu), and enables the Virtual Machine Platform feature. Restart when prompted.

To install a specific distribution:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu-22.04

List available distributions:

wsl --list --online

Setting WSL2 as Default

If you have an existing WSL1 installation, you can upgrade it:

# Set WSL2 as default version for new installs
wsl --set-default-version 2

# Upgrade an existing distro to WSL2
wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2

Accessing the Linux File System

One important practical note: WSL2’s Linux file system lives inside the VM’s virtual disk, not natively on your Windows drive. Accessing Windows files from Linux is fast via /mnt/c/ (e.g., /mnt/c/Users/mhassel/), but for best performance — especially with git, npm, and build tools — keep your project files on the Linux file system, not on /mnt/c/.

In Windows Explorer, you can access your Linux home directory directly via the network path \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\mhassel\, or just type \\wsl$ in the Explorer address bar to browse all running WSL distributions.

Docker on WSL2

One of the most compelling reasons to upgrade to WSL2 is seamless Docker support. Install Docker Desktop for Windows and enable the WSL2 backend in Docker Desktop settings. From that point, running Docker commands in your Ubuntu terminal “just works” — no separate Linux VM required.

docker run hello-world

Conclusion

Going from a dead Macbook to a working Linux development environment on a Windows machine was a satisfying journey. What started as a stopgap became a legitimate workflow. With WSL2 in 2026, the experience has improved further: better performance, full Docker support, GPU passthrough for ML workloads, and systemd support (on Ubuntu 22.04+).

If you are a developer on Windows who has not tried WSL2 yet, it is worth an afternoon. The command line tools you know from Linux and macOS work exactly the same way.