Arch-WSL2.md

WSL2 Setup Guide

Install

Open a PowerShell window with administrative privileges and run the following commands to enable WSL

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

and enable Virtual Machine Platform features

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

then restart to apply changes

Restart-Computer

Setup

After restart, open PowerShell and run the following command to update the WSL

wsl --update

and set WSL2 default version to 2

wsl --set-default-version 2

Install Arch Linux

Arch Linux is fast, installs minimal packages far fewer than other distributions, has the fastest package manager and provides a clean, lightweight system perfect for development work.

wsl --install archlinux

Configure Arch Linux

Update and install minimal packages

cd ~ && pacman -Syu --noconfirm && pacman -S --noconfirm wget nano less

Download the setup script

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/czirok/apps/main/docs/archlinux.sh -O archlinux.sh

Make the script executable

chmod +x archlinux.sh

Edit archlinux.sh before running

Open the archlinux.sh file in a text editor nano archlinux.sh, and modify the following variables to suit your preferences:

TIMEZONE="Europe/Budapest"
LOCALE_PRIMARY="hu_HU.UTF-8"
USERNAME="username"

TIMEZONE is a directory under /usr/share/zoneinfo/, you can find your timezone by running:

ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/

LOCALE_PRIMARY is the locale you want to set as default, it should be available in /etc/locale.gen. You can check available locales by running:

cat /etc/locale.gen | less

Run the script

Set password for the user when prompted.

./archlinux.sh

exit

Restart WSL to apply user settings

wsl --terminate archlinux
wsl --shutdown
wsl -d archlinux

GNOME Control Center

You can change the theme, dark or light mode, and other settings using the GNOME Control Center. Run the following command to open it:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center

Install AUR (optional)

sudo pacman -S --noconfirm git base-devel

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git

cd yay

makepkg -si --noconfirm

pacman help

Update OS

sudo pacman -Syu

List installed packages

pacman -Q

Search packages

pacman -Ss package

Search installed packages

pacman -Qs package

Install packages

sudo pacman -S package

Remove packages

sudo pacman -R package

Remove orphaned packages

sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)