Install WSL2 + Docker on Windows

This post is a serial of update steps (2024) to install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) v2 including deploying Docker service on it at the end.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
  • Hyper-V
  • Windows Terminal
• WSL installation
• Ubuntu preparation
  • Ubuntu updates
  • Systemd
• Docker

Requirements

First ensure you have latest Windows updates installed. You must be running Windows 10 version 2004 and higher (Build 19041 and higher) or Windows 11.

Hyper-V

Also ensure Hyper-V is enabled under Windows features (to open this dialog press WINDOWS key and type Turn Windows features on or off):

Windows Terminal

Optionally install Windows Terminal APP via Windows store:

WSL installation

Now open the terminal an use wsl command to be installed via:

wsl --install

When asked allow the pop-up message to scale up privileges (it could be requested several times):

Ubuntu will be installed by default (check options of previous command if you prefer other distribution):

After installation you will need to reboot Windows:

After rebooting Windows, a terminal window will appear automatically to finish Ubuntu installation:

It will take a while to install, when it finishes press any key to close the window.

If when it finishes you receive a message that virtualization is not enabled in the BIOS, please check it rebooting Windows and entering your BIOS settings, typically under CPU settings:

Now you can open Terminal APP and under the triangle of the + symbol select Ubuntu (you could change which one to open by default in Settings menu):

First time it will need to finish Ubuntu installation:

Once installed you will need to fill username & password (twice):

Ubuntu preparation

Ubuntu updates

First thing is to update Ubuntu with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Systemd

Then we need to ensure systemd is enabled in wsl settings, edit the file /etc/wsl.conf and check these lines are present:

[boot]
systemd=true

Docker

Now, we install docker.io and add your user to docker group to be able to run docker commands with your user (not requiring root user):

sudo apt install docker.io
sudo adduser emilio docker

Close the terminal and open it again to apply permissions changes, after this you can check the installed version and run a hello-world container:

$ docker --version
Docker version 24.0.5, build 24.0.5-0ubuntu1~22.04.1
$ docker run -it --rm hello-world

All is done! 🙂