Arch Linux on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

In this video I install Arch Linux on Windows Subsystem for Linux. I show all of the steps required on a stock Windows 10 system. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

[thepresentistheirsthefutur]

You are a hidden gem. Thank you so much for this amazing guide. Not only did I manage to run Arch on wsl2 on one machine I transferred it to another machine vhdx and it was good to go.

[Trenial]

worked brilliantly dude! thank you so much for this video!

[rizkiiqbalyt]

The tutorial is very easy to understand and works perfectly, thanks a lot

[danielnadar]

Awesome todd. This made the entire process a piece of cake.

[darwinjackson]

Thank you! you made this whole process really easy

[celestialbeing]

👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 So you can have more then one distro on your system cool. Void, Alpine, Arch. Fabulous tutorial.

[somashekharalla]

Awesome todd, . Finally, I could able to install Arch Linux. Thank you

[tonybengue]

Really awesome. Thanks for this tutorial

[glitchdout]

This worked perfectly. Thanks for the guide!

[davidarnold]

Thanks so much tried a different workaround - this is perfect

[plrogerio]

Very nice, it's working fine, tks. Good Job!

[skilz]

One major issue: Docker only works through WSL 2.
For my current situation, I have Windows 10 Pro with the following Windows Features installed:
Containers, Limited Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Platform, Windows Hypervisor Platform, & WSL installed.

My CPU has virtualization for both types: VT-i and VT-x. Within windows under system info:
I have the following Hyper-V support:
VM Monitor Mode Extensions, Virtualization Enabled in Firmware, & Data Execution Prevention.
I Do Not Have Support for SLAT (Second Level Address Translation Extensions).

With this, I cannot use WSL v2, Docker and a few other modern things.

As I was setting up WSL with Ubuntu as the base, there is an available ArchLinux distro for WSL through the Microsoft Store. Before trying to install this, doing the same steps as seen within this video for setting up Ubuntu and updating will work, but within either CMD or PowerShell, you have to make sure that WSL 1 is set to default for older architectures that do not have SLAT instruction support. This is a limitation.

After setting wsl default to version 1. I was able to successfully install the Arch Distro that is available through the Microsoft Store without having to use Docker or some other virtual container.

This was a bit tricky to initially get setup because it was very hard to find the fact that WSL 2 requires SLAT. This can be found on Microsoft's website for WSL now, yet it's not directly obvious as upfront information before installing or setting up WSL for Windows 10+.

This information was a bit buried. It took me almost 2-3 days to troubleshoot this.

I only posted this for those who have older architectures such as the Core 2 series pre iSeries as a work around.

Do know that currently, with only having access to WSL v1 as opposed to WSL v2 you are limited. If you do use WSL v1 for the moment I believe you can only use the bash shell within the terminal. There is no desktop manager or visual application support without having to setup an actual virtual machine such as Virtual Box or VM Ware, or alternatively setting up a dual boot, yet the dual boot defeats the purpose of using WSL. Otherwise, you will need more recent or modern hardware that should by default come with SLAT support that WSL 2, Docker and other software suites are now relying on.

I'm still scouring the internet and trying to find or see if there's an alternative solution or a work around to be able to install, either XCFE, KDE Plasma, etc... within my local distributions.

For the time being I am able to load and sign into both Ubuntu and Arch through Windows Terminal under wsl v1. I'm able to use the bash commands and scripts, I can install various packages, etc. However, if I'm not mistaken, I am limited as I do not have all of the capabilities to me that are offered by the Linux Kernel.

Since I'm on older hardware, I might have to resort to setting up Virtual Box instead in order to have access to some of the various Linux Desktop Environments and Window Managers.

[gamesus]

very helpfull video, thank you. I wish ms include arch in their wsl distros at some point in future.

[electricz]

Hi, i only have a 250GB SSD where my Windows is running but i have a 2TB HDD where i like to install it on. Is there a way to change the installation dir or not? It try to install on C everytime and then it can't install docker because there is no storage anymore.

[martiniusvlogs]

for some reason on powershell its doesnt have a list where i can choose which distro to go to please help

[sportsallerameuretc]

Nice top ! Thanks !
And for the graphique mod? What is the procédure. I think kex maybe.... thanks

[bestzedandyi]

Thank you! very helpful video, everything worked flawlessly except the last section about archey3. It says error:target not found:archey3. Not that it matters anyway.

[jamirvillarosa]

-Getting Missing ', ' or '}' in object declaration-
-when inputting: "wsl.exe -u <username> -d Arch" in visual studio code. not sure what am I doing wrong.-

no need to edit the json file. it's unecessary and prone to weird errors like what I experienced. Just open up settings>Arch then add -u <your username> in the command line, so it should be like this: *C:\Windows\system32\wsl.exe -u <username> -d Arch*

[joaodejesus]

My docker not starting.

ATT: I fixed it, deleting all remnants of docker on the pc, then I downloaded docker desktop from the official website, performed the installation, restarted the computer and installed docker on ubuntu too, after that it started normally.

[reelsenjoyer]

I think i've missed something, how do you have a directory 'archlinux' under /mnt/c/Tools/WSL? I've pulled Arch Linux on docker as same steps as before but I seem don't have a directory named 'archlinux' in the current directory I've pulled into it