How to Install Ubuntu 20.04 on WSL

This is a guide on how to install the Ubuntu 20.04 distro on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Links to various linux distros can be found here – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual#downloading-distros

I’m downloading manually for this distro. I can’t get Invoke-WebRequest / curl working with this 20.04 distro, works fine for 18.04 & 16.04 though.

Move the downloaded file into some directory.

Now into the directory within PowerShell, rename the file from .appx to .zip format.

# rename Ubuntu appx file to zip format
# add-appxpackage doesn't always work, extracting the .exe seems better
Rename-Item .\Ubuntu_2004.2020.424.0_x64.appx .\Ubuntu_2004.zip

Extract the zip file into a new directory.

# extract the zip file into a new dir
Expand-Archive .\Ubuntu_2004.zip .\Ubuntu_2004

Run the ubuntu2004.exe file within the extracted directory and follow the setup instructions to create a new Linux login.

Once done wsl should be waiting for you.

Lastly, I’m now exiting (‘exit’ command) out of WSL, listing out my Linux distros and setting this Ubuntu 20.04 distro as my default.