WSL: importing `Client` from `dask.distributed` results in an `ImportError` with `pip`-installed `dask`

[kjczarne]

Describe the issue:

On Windows Subsystem for Linux it seems like the distributed module is not found with a complete installation.

Note

I did check whether I'm in the right environment.

Minimal Complete Verifiable Example:

# I first mistakenly installed the minimal package:
pip install dask
# Then I upgraded to complete:
pip install -U "dask[complete]"
# When things didn't work I've also uninstalled `dask`
# and installed again:
pip uninstall dask
pip install -U "dask[complete]"
# I also tried installing `distributed` explicitly:
pip install -U "dask[distributed]"

from dask.distributed import Client

We get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/kisoji/miniconda3/envs/dkm/lib/python3.10/site-packages/dask/distributed.py", line 13, in <module>
    from distributed import *
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distributed'

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/kisoji/miniconda3/envs/dkm/lib/python3.10/site-packages/dask/distributed.py", line 16, in <module>
    raise ImportError(_import_error_message) from e
ImportError: dask.distributed is not installed.

Please either conda or pip install distributed:

  conda install dask distributed             # either conda install
  python -m pip install "dask[distributed]" --upgrade    # or pip install

Anything else we need to know?:

Meanwhile, installing from Conda Forge seems to work:

conda install dask -c conda-forge

Environment:

• Dask version: 2025.2.0
• Python version: 3.10.13
• Operating System: Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS)
• Install method (conda, pip, source): pip

[kjczarne]

Turns out sb on our shared machine symlinked pip to the base env

[jacobtomlinson]

Glad you got it figured out!