Boost Your Development Speed: A Complete Guide to Installing and Using WSL 2 on Windows
Microsoft’s Build conference introduced Windows Terminal and WSL 2, and this guide walks you through installing WSL 2 on Windows 10 (Build 18917+), enabling required features, setting the default version, and even compiling the WSL 2 kernel, highlighting performance gains like 20× faster tar extraction.
Microsoft announced Windows Terminal and WSL 2 at the Build conference, offering developers a Linux‑like experience on Windows.
File‑system performance is improved and full system‑call compatibility is provided.
WSL 2 can run more Linux applications such as Docker, and supports commands like git clone, npm install, apt update, apt upgrade.
Microsoft states that extracting tar files in WSL 2 is up to 20× faster than WSL 1, and typical workflows with git clone, npm install or cmake see 2–5× speed gains.
Recent updates pushed WSL 2 back onto GitHub’s trending list, prompting this step‑by‑step installation guide.
Installing WSL 2
WSL 2 requires Windows 10 version Build 18917 or later. Enable “Windows Virtual Machine Platform” and “Windows Subsystem for Linux” in the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog, then restart.
Install a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Store.
Run the following command in PowerShell to set the version for the installed distro: wsl --set-version <Distro> 2 Replace <Distro> with the name of the Linux distribution you installed.
To make WSL 2 the default for all new installations, execute:
wsl --set-default-version 2Compiling the WSL 2 Kernel
Microsoft provides a three‑step process on GitHub:
Install the latest Ubuntu distribution from the Microsoft Store.
Open the Ubuntu subsystem and install kernel build dependencies:
sudo install build-essential flex bison libssl-dev libelf-devCompile the kernel: make KCONFIG_CONFIG=Microsoft/config-wsl The source and build instructions are available at:
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel
Signed-in readers can open the original source through BestHub's protected redirect.
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