The Easiest Guide to Installing and Managing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a powerful addition to Windows 10 and Windows 11. It allows you to run a full Linux distribution without the hassle of a traditional VM setup. For a lot of development tasks, it’s (almost) as good as running on bare metal.

There are two versions of WSL, there’s WSL 1 which is the classic mode most people are used to, and WSL 2 which offers a host of advancements but is more in line with traditional virtualization without the same shortcomings (it leverages Hyper-V and a full Linux kernel). WSL 2 also supports GUI applications.

This guide is going to cover both installation via the GUI, and via command line and PowerShell. This guide is only really going to cover the newer method for installing WSL for Windows 10 2004 and later for command prompt (though I have included the legacy method just in case). I will mainly include examples for Debian, but the same instructions work with other variants (Ubuntu and beyond).

GUI Install

The GUI install requires turning on a Windows feature for Windows Subsystem for Linux (and optionally Hyper-V if you want WSL 2), rebooting your machine, then installing Debian (or distro of choice) from the Microsoft Store.

Click the start icon to open the start menu.

Locate the “Turn Windows features on or off” option. You can search for “windows features” or similar to locate it. You can also run “optionalfeatures” directly.

Turn on “Windows Subsystem for Linux” and Hyper-V (if you want WSL 2). This will prompt you to reboot your machine to apply the changes. This may take a couple minutes to properly apply everything.

Navigate to the Microsoft Store after reboot. Type “Microsoft Store” from the start menu. There are command line ways to do this as well, but this is the easier method from the GUI.

Look for your distro of choice. I personally use Debian, but you can use whatever you like.

Once the distro of choice is done installing, it should add a “program” to launch the Linux container of choice. Once you open this, it will prompt you to finalize the setup. Debian will prompt you to add a new user. Other distributions do similar but may have further configuration options.

Command Line Install

The command line install is much easier with newer builds of Windows 10 (or Windows 11). There are also many other options and combinations to accomplish the same basic goals. We’re going to cover the standard workflow here, but provide some advanced options in the next section.

Open an administrative command prompt (you can use Powershell as well) and run the following:

wsl.exe --install -d debian

This will install WSL and Debian in one go. You can change “debian” for a distribution of choice. If you’d prefer to just install WSL itself (and choose the distribution later), run the following:

wsl.exe --install

This option is useful since you can also set the default version of WSL to 2 or 1 depending with the following:

wsl.exe --set-default-version [version number]

Legacy Method for Older Windows

You can use DISM to install features on older versions of Windows 10 (per Microsoft).

First, install the Windows Subsystem for Linux with the norestart flag (so we can control our reboot):

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

Install virtualization options with the following (norestart so you can reboot when you want):

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

Advanced Command Line Options

We covered some of the basic usage of installing WSL, but there is a lot of configurability possible with WSL.

Status and Availability

You can get a list of what is installed with:

wsl.exe --list --verbose

You can also add extra options like –running to get only running distributions.

This gets you a list of the distributions, the state, and the version, for example:

C:\Windows\system32>wsl.exe --list --verbose
  NAME      STATE           VERSION
* Debian    Running         1

You can get a list of available distributions (that are installable from the store) with the following:

wsl.exe --list --online

The status is available with:

wsl.exe --status

Versions and Updates

We talked about setting the default WSL version with:

wsl.exe --set-default-version [1 or 2 for version number]

But, you can also set the version for a specific container with:

wsl.exe --set-version [distribution] [version number]

You can also change which distribution is the default for when you run wsl.exe via:

wsl.exe --set-default [distribution]

WSL allows the WSL kernel to be updated with:

wsl.exe --update

Or rolled back with:

wsl.exe --update rollback

Commands and Management

You can run a basic command with the following:

wsl.exe -e [command]

Or, for it to ignore any other options (after the –):

wsl.exe -- [more command line]

Run the default container as a specific user with:

wsl.exe --user [user]

Run a specific container with the following:

wsl.exe -d [distribution]

You can chain this with the user:

wsl.exe -d [distribution] -u [user]

Change the distribution’s default user with:

[distribution] config --default-user [user]

This would look something like:

debian config --default-user myuser

Shutdown WSL 2 distributions with:

wsl.exe --shutdown

Terminate a specific WSL distribution with:

wsl.exe --terminate [distribution]

Remove an installed distribution with:

wsl.exe --unregister [distribution]

You can export a setup, run the following command:

wsl.exe --export [distribution] [tarball location]

This would look something like:

wsl.exe --export debian C:\bkup\debian.tar

To import, run:

wsl.exe --import [distribution name] [import location] [tarball location]

This looks like:

wsl.exe --import debian-test C:\WSL\debian-test C:\bkup\debian.tar

WSL includes multiple commands for mounting built off of this basic command:

wsl.exe –mount [options]

See the following documentation from Microsoft for the specifics of mounting.

See this for more information on some of the commands.

Image by Dariusz Robert Drewnicki from Pixabay