Details to install wsl2 on windows without using the windows store

Summary

Windows is finally becoming a good alternative to mac osx for developers. With its built in linux support via wsl2, I decided to purchase a somewhat powerful windows machine for coding and gaming.

My initial setup involved following the instructions provided by microsoft. At this time of writing, there was no easy command and I had to follow instructions.

The end result was wsl setup successfully, but nothing was working. Make sure wsl is set to v2.

wsl --help

After realising I couldn’t download the linux distro through the store and I decided to download the package manually.

After installing debian manually which results in the file being saved to an appx file.

Unzipping the appx file, open if and run the *.exe file. In my case I had to open the debian.exe file.

Afterwards, a black window will open and prompt you to fill out details for your linux distro.

Hopefully this article was useful.

References

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual