Installing Ubuntu Linux

Installing Ubuntu on WSL2 has two main steps. First, we'll enable the WSL2 system on our computer. Second, we'll choose the Ubuntu distribution to install in WSL2. While we will cover the basic steps here, the most up-to-date instructions and troubleshooting information can always be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10.

Microsoft is currently working on streamlining the first step by adding a wsl --install command, which can be run from Windows Terminal with administrator privileges. Until that's ready, though, we'll need to manually install WSL2 by following Step 1.

Step 1: Install WSL2

First, we'll enable the required Windows 10 features. From the start menu, search for Turn Windows Features on or off and then enable two features, the Virtual Machine Platform and the Windows Subsystem for Linux:

Figure 3.1 – Adding the two Windows features required for WSL2

Once...