Back in 2017, Windows released the original WSL version. WSL 2 is an improvement over version 1 and comes with a performance boost, full system call compatibility, and built with a new architecture that delivers features that make WSL an amazing way to run a Linux environment in Windows. To install WSL 2 on Windows 10, these two requirements must be met:

Windows 10 May 2020 (2004), Windows 10 May 2019 (1903), or Windows 10 November 2019 (1909) or later A computer with Hyper-V Virtualization support

When you’re ready to enable WSL 2 on Windows 10, follow the steps below:

Enable WSL in Windows

To enable WSL in Windows, you will want to open the PowerShell terminal as administrator. Click on Start then begin typing PowerShell. Next, right-click the Windows PowerShell app and choose to run as administrator. When the console opens, run the commands below: After installing, you should get a success message similar to the lines below:

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

WSL 2 requires Windows 10 Virtual Machine Platform to be enabled. This is not Hyper-V. To enable the VM platform feature in Windows, run the commands below from the same PowerShell administrator’s console. If you’re using Windows 10 version lower than 2004, then use the commands below: When you’re done running the commands above, restart your computer for all the configuration changes to apply. If you don’t restart, the below command might not be recognized. After restarting your computer, login back in and launch PowerShell as administrator. Then run the commands below to configure WSL 2 as the default version of WSL.

Install Ubuntu on Windows 10

Now that WSL 2 is installed and ready to be used, open the link below to download and install a copy of Ubuntu 20.04 from the Windows store. Get Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Microsoft Store Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Windows allows you to use Ubuntu Terminal and run Ubuntu command line utilities including bash, ssh, git, apt, and many more. Click the Get button and install. After installing Ubuntu, you’ll want the option to launch Ubuntu from the Windows WSL environment. After launching Ubuntu, it should install and prompt you to create your account. That should do it! Some troubleshooting commands to run when you run into issues. Conclusion: This post showed you how to install WSL 2 on Windows 10 and install Ubuntu 20.04. If you find any error above please use the comment form below to report.