The complete WSL2 + GUI setup

In May 2020 Windows released version 2004 (build 19041) of Windows 10 and with this came the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2). WSL2, unlike its predecessor WSL, is a full Linux kernel capable of running on your Windows system.

The arrival of WSL2 is game-changing for Linux and Windows. While it certainly won’t stop people from dual-booting Windows and Linux — I certainly haven’t — there are many use cases that WSL2 can satisfy. I can do pretty much all my research and dev work on Ubuntu via WSL2 on my Windows 10 laptop. When I need to run graphics-intensive tasks in Linux I use my dual-boot desktop. WSL2 also provides a softer introduction to the Linux ecosystem from the safety of a system that a user is familiar with. I know many people who are a little intimidated to try and dual-boot Windows with Linux. Now it is simple, just go to the Microsoft Store and install it like any other piece of software.

In this article, I’ll take you through my WSL2 setup including how to use Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications despite not being officially supported yet.

Installing WSL2

Let’s jump right in! Firstly, we need to install WSL and set WSL2 to be the default. You will need to open a PowerShell as administrator and then copy, paste, and run each command below. The commands must be executed separately by pressing the Enter/Return key in the PowerShell after each paste operation. The official Microsoft instructions can be found here.