WSL2 installation and commands

Last update: 7 Mar 2023

WSL stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux. Its current version is 2.

This guide shows how to install and use WSL2 on Windows 10/11.

Installation

Open a command window (cmd, PowerShell or Windows Terminal) and run the command

wsl --install

It will enable WSL and install the latest Linux Ubuntu version.

If you want a different Linux distribution, you can get the list of the supported Linux distros with the following command:

wsl -l -o

See here for more details.

To check the status of WSL engine and distributions, use the following command:

wsl --status

To upgrade WSL to the latest version/patch, use the following command:

wsl --upgrade