Hey there,
I wanted to give WSL2 a try, for that I had to install Win10. I took some notes and I’m sharing them here in case it’s useful to others.
The steps assume you already have a windows subscription/licences you can use.
= Windows Partition =
I had a testing partition with an Ubuntu install before starting which I used for windows. You best repartition/resize from an Ubuntu liveCD before starting if needed, the custom partitioning on the windows installer didn’t seem to propose the option to resize linux partitions.
= Windows Insider =
To access WSL2 you need to opt in to be an insider
https://insider.windows.com , sign in with your microsoft account and activate
= Download the ISO =
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewiso
I’ve picked amd64(right!)/english/18912 , the webpage gave some error/faq reference at first but it worked after retrying a few minutes later.
(other reported that you can install a non insider version and opt in to the insider channel later on)
= Write the ISO =
The file is a bit less than 5G, I used a 8G key which was enough.
I didn’t manage to get the write the ISO with our “standard” tools and get it to boot (e.g doing a “restore image” from gnome-disks result in the inspiron laptop I used to not list the key as a boot device)
Mounting the iso from gnome-disks/nautilus and copying the content to a fat32 format key worked for others though.
Since that was not working for me I ended up using ‘woeusb’ which is what the internet recommends, you can easily install it from that ppa, https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/ubuntu/webupd8
= Boot the key/installing windows =
(My bios is configured in uefi mode, secure boot disabled, not sure if that makes a difference.)
Booting the key and going through the installation was straight forward.
After installation I got asked for my microsoft account email/password, no other key/ID was required.
Some extra clicks and I had a working win10 desktop
= Install WSL =
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 has the details
Basically access PowerShell as admin (typing in the panel search entry find it without issue, admin option is on the right)
$ Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
-> reboot
Go to the win store (icon in the panel as well), search for "ubuntu’, I installed 18.04
= Enable WSL =
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/initialize-distro
You just need to click ‘launch’ after the install. It took like 10 minutes for me which felt a bit long, then asked for username/password and it was enabled.
= Update windows =
The current ISO was not new enough so I had to update Windows
Go to settings
-> Windows Insider Program section
Log in into your microsoft account again from there to be able to change the setting to the most uptodate channel
-> Windows Updates
here the status was ‘getting things ready’, then it installed the update, that took quite some time (at least an hour)
= Enabled WSL2 =
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-install
$ wsl --set-version Ubuntu-18.04 2
You can now start Ubuntu from the windows menu again and get a WSL2 command line with Ubuntu!