WSL2: meet the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2

The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) is probably the simplest and most efficient solution to use Linux ap­pli­ca­tions in Windows. WSL2 allows access to Linux tools and ap­pli­ca­tions directly from the well-known Windows en­vi­ron­ment which makes it a good option for de­vel­op­ers. Due to its com­plete­ly revised ar­chi­tec­ture compared to WSL1, WSL2 is more per­for­mant than other options for using Linux tools in Windows.

WSL2, which was released in early 2020, is the further de­vel­op­ment of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL1). Linux is an open source operating system and is, therefore, different to Windows, which is developed and dis­trib­uted as a com­mer­cial product. Linux can be a great option due to the wide range of developer tools and other software packages available free of charge.

The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between WSL2 and its pre­de­ces­sor lies in the ar­chi­tec­ture of the software. While WSL1 provided a com­pat­i­bil­i­ty layer for trans­lat­ing code execution between Windows and Linux, WSL2 relies on the vir­tu­al­iza­tion of a Linux operating system. The virtual machine used for this runs on the native Windows hy­per­vi­sor, hyper-V.

While the func­tion­al­i­ty of the Linux interface provided by WSL1 was limited, WSL2 uses a complete Linux kernel. This is a kernel specially optimized for WSL2 both in terms of size and per­for­mance and is based on the stable original code from “kernel.org”. In use, this is reflected in the faster code execution by a factor of about two to twenty. Fur­ther­more, WSL2 requires less memory than the previous version. That the kernel is main­tained as part of the regular Windows updates makes it more con­ve­nient for its users, too.

Since WSL1 uses a trans­la­tion layer to mediate between Linux and Windows, some spe­cial­ized Linux software is left out in this version of WSL. In contrast, WSL2’s kernel vir­tu­al­iza­tion performs full system call com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. In practice, this means that even complex software like Docker can be operated within WSL2. Fur­ther­more, the GPU can be accessed from the Linux en­vi­ron­ment, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly useful for ap­pli­ca­tions with large datasets such as machine learning and data science.

The system re­quire­ments for using WSL2 depend on the processor installed in your machine:

• For x64 systems, you need at least version 1903 with build 18362 or later.
• For ARM64 systems, you need at least version 2004 with build 19041 or later.

If you are not sure which Windows edition and version you are running, you can check this with the following steps:

• Press the Windows logo key + [R], type “winver” in the text box that appears and press [Enter].
• Al­ter­na­tive­ly, click Start > Settings > System > Info > Windows Spec­i­fi­ca­tion and read the values there.

In principle, there are two methods for using WSL2 on your system. We will show the two different methods in detail, depending on your situation:

1. If you have not yet installed a Windows subsystem for Linux, install both the WSL2 on your system and set up a Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion.
2. If you are already using WSL1, install WSL2 and upgrade the existing Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions.

To set up the WSL2 on your system, you need the Windows Pow­er­Shell. Note that you must start Pow­er­Shell as an ad­min­is­tra­tor to perform the in­stal­la­tion. Copy the commands shown to the Pow­er­Shell prompt and run them there.

If you do not have WSL1 installed on your system, follow our in­struc­tions to install both a WSL2 and a Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion:

Copy and run the following command from the Pow­er­Shell prompt:

Copy and run the following command from the Pow­er­Shell prompt:

First, download the ap­pro­pri­ate in­stal­la­tion package for your system. Then run the installer. Choose the ap­pro­pri­ate package depending on your computer processor:

• In­stal­la­tion package for x64-Systems
• In­stal­la­tion package for ARM64-Systems

Copy and run the following command from the Pow­er­Shell prompt:

Restart your computer.

Open the Microsoft Store and search for “Linux”. You will see a selection of available Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions.

Click on the Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion and then on “Install”. If you are not sure which dis­tri­b­u­tion is right for you, we recommend in­stalling Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS.

After the in­stal­la­tion is complete, click “Start”.

In the next window, the packages will be down­loaded and unpacked. This may take a few minutes. Finally, you will be prompted to specify a username and a password for the new Linux in­stal­la­tion.

Provided you are already using WSL1 and have set up a Linux in­stal­la­tion, go through steps 2-4 from the in­struc­tions above first. Then use the following Pow­er­Shell command to switch your installed Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion to WSL2:

The <dis­tri­b­u­tion> place­hold­er must be replaced with the name of an installed Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion. Use the following Pow­er­Shell command to display a list of installed Linux dis­tri­b­u­tions and view their names:

As you have seen, using WSL2 offers many ad­van­tages over the previous version. To conclude this in­tro­duc­tion to WSL2, we have sum­ma­rized the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences of the two versions for you: