How to setup WSL 2 for VS Code and Node.js development (2021)

This quick guide will demonstrate how to install the new Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2.

WSL enables Windows users to run GNU/Linux environment under a Windows host machine. No more virtual machines or dualbooting!

Note: The guide is written using Ubuntu as the Linux distribution, you may need to tweak the shell commands if want to use a different distro.

ℹ️ Press Win+R and type in winver to find your version.

Run following commands with elevated PowerShell.

⁣1. Install WSL 1

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

⁣2. Enable the "Virtual Machine Platform" optional feature.

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

⁣3. Restart your machine.

⁣4. After restarting set your WSL version to 2:

wsl --set-default-version 2

Go to the Microsoft store and pick & install distro you like. I chose Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

The following Linux distributions are available as of now (10th Sep. 2020):

There are also 3rd party distributions for WSL available. ArchWSL is one of them.

😕 I ran into issues using NVM with WSL, we'll be installing Node.js the manual way.

⁣1. Open WSL by hitting Win+R and typing: wsl

⁣2. Run following commands (You may want to up the version number):

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

⁣3. You can verify the installation by typing node -v

sudo npm i -g yarn

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

You also need to change the default VS Code shell, press Ctrl+Shift+P: