Install Windows Subsystem for Linux

If you’re accustomed to using a unix shell as your command-line interface, you may end up being very unproductive using Windows 10.

Microsoft (in collaboration with Canonical) has made a tremendous effort into closing the gap between Linux and Windows developers by creating a kernel compatibility layer based on Ubuntu.

Installing Ubuntu in WSL

The process is quite simple if you’re not dealing with corporate restrictions:

1. Press the Win + S button, and search for features, then select Turn Windows features on or off.
2. Scroll all the way down, and enable Windows Subsystem for Linux.
3. Reboot your system.
4. Open the Microsoft Store by pressing Win + S and searching for “store”.
5. In the search bar of Microsoft Store, search for “Ubuntu”, select the first result, and click “Install”.
6. After the installation has completed, search for Ubuntu, and open the app.

Alternative Installation Method (Optional)

1. Press Win + S, search for powershell and run Windows Powershell as administrator (right click and “Run as administrator”).
2. Run the following code:

   Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
   

3. Reboot your system.
4. In a normal powershell window, and download the Ubuntu distribution like so:

   Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://aka.ms/wsl-ubuntu-1804" -OutFile Ubuntu.appx -UseBasicParsing
   

5. Rename and extract the downloaded files:

   Rename-Item Ubuntu.appx Ubuntu.zip
   Expand-Archive Ubuntu.zip Ubuntu
   

6. Open up the Ubuntu folder:

   explorer Ubuntu
   

7. Run the executable by double clicking ubuntu1804.exe.
8. At this point you will have the same installation, but potentially without network access. In order to fix this, take a look at this repository.