The file likely doesn't exist at first installation, so let's get it set up, and for this you'll want to stay logged in as root and not your user account.Installing Ubuntu after Windows is easy and straight forward process. Open up Ubuntu 21.10 and navigate to the file as below. There are a few different ways you can handle this, but the easiest, and largely safest, is to edit the wsl.conf file on the distro to tell WSL to log you in as your user account instead of root. Configuring the default user for a distro installed in this way is a little different to those that have an executable downloaded from the Store. While not a long process to switch to or enter your new installation as your user instead of root, automating the process is always better. To launch into Ubuntu 21.10 as your new user, from PowerShell enter: wsl -d -u So you'll want to create one and add it to the sudo group: adduser usermod -aG sudo As such you won't have a user set up, there will only be root. Basic setup of Ubuntu 21.10Īs you've basically sideloaded Ubuntu 21.10, it doesn't run through the initial setup process you get when you install Ubuntu from the Microsoft Store. If you use Windows Terminal, however, and you really should, WSL will automatically add it to the dropdown menu with all the other shells you can open.

You'll need to launch it manually with: wsl -d As this hasn't been installed from the Microsoft Store, there is no app shortcut created in the Start Menu. It'll take a minute, but once it's finished you can move on to setting up. Simply add a 1 or a 2 after the flag to specify which version you require. It will install to whichever version of WSL your system recognizes as default, but you can alter that at installation to save the need to convert it later on. It doesn't really matter where you unpack and install the image, but it doesn't hurt to create a dedicated directory, especially if you plan on installing multiple distros in this fashion.Īdditionally, you can specify a version of WSL at the end with the -versionįlag. So, on my system, it looks like this: wsl -import Ubuntu-2110 c:/WSL/Ubuntu-2110 c:/Downloads/ Inside PowerShell, you will need to enter the following command to import and install Ubuntu 21.10: wsl -import

We have a full guide on exporting and importing Linux distros in WSL that can help, but we'll still cover everything you need here. The process of installation begins with importing the downloaded image from Ubuntu into your WSL setup.

Take a note of where you've downloaded the tar file from the steps above to as you'll need the file location as part of the install process. Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)įrom here on out you're going to be in your PowerShell terminal.

Ubuntu download for windows 10