How to Install Ubuntu 23.04 on WSL

Windows Subsystem for Linux

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets developers run a GNU/Linux environment — including most command-line tools, utilities, and applications — directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dualboot setup. Below is the list of Linux distributions that supported by WSL for auto installation.

PS C:\> wsl -l -o
The following is a list of valid distributions that can be installed.
Install using 'wsl.exe --install <Distro>'.

NAME                                   FRIENDLY NAME
Ubuntu                                 Ubuntu
Debian                                 Debian GNU/Linux
kali-linux                             Kali Linux Rolling
Ubuntu-18.04                           Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Ubuntu-20.04                           Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu-22.04                           Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
OracleLinux_7_9                        Oracle Linux 7.9
OracleLinux_8_7                        Oracle Linux 8.7
OracleLinux_9_1                        Oracle Linux 9.1
openSUSE-Leap-15.5                     openSUSE Leap 15.5
SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-Server-15-SP4    SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4
SUSE-Linux-Enterprise-15-SP5           SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP5
openSUSE-Tumbleweed                    openSUSE Tumbleweed

At this moment, WSL doesn’t support Ubuntu 23.04 officially. So, we need to install it manually. Below is a quick snapshot about the manual process.

Install an Ubuntu 22.04 instance on WSL.
Install Docker on the Ubuntu instance.
Pull the Ubuntu 23.04 image from Docker Hub.
Create a container from Ubuntu 23.04 image.
Export the container to a .tar file.
Import the exported .tar file to an instance on WSL.

Before you begin

To install Ubuntu 23.04 on WSL, make sure you have:

Enabled WSL on your Windows 10/11.

Install the Ubuntu Instance

By default, when enabling WSL on Windows 10/11. The Ubuntu 22.04 is being installed automatically. If it not, you can install it using the below command.

wsl --install ubuntu

To get this list of the installed instances on your system, run wsl -l -v.

PS C:\> wsl -l -v
  NAME      STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu    Stopped         2
  Debian    Running         2

To start the Ubuntu instance, run wsl -d ubuntu. One the instance starts, you would navigate to the bash of the Ubuntu instance automatically.

PS C:\Users\admin> wsl -d ubuntu
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.90.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2 x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

This message is shown once a day. To disable it please create the
/home/bonben/.hushlogin file.
bonben@DESKTOP-K34B7Q9:/mnt/c/Users/admin$

Install Docker on Ubuntu instance

1️⃣ You can install Docker on the Ubuntu 22.04 instance following the Docker’s documentation from this link. Or you can simply run the below script to install it automatically.

Note Note: You must run the script in the Ubuntu shell instead of the PowerShell in Windows host.

sudo wget -qO - https://bonguides.com/docker | bash

When the installation finishes, you can see the docker service is running.

● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2023-09-21 13:47:33 +07; 319ms ago
TriggeredBy: ● docker.socket
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com
   Main PID: 1863 (dockerd)
      Tasks: 12
     Memory: 30.8M
     CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
             └─1863 /usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock

2️⃣ Pull the Ubuntu 23.04 image from Docker Hub

sudo docker pull ubuntu:lunar

#Output
lunar: Pulling from library/ubuntu
10fb01f4f619: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:f1090cfa89ab321a6d670e79652f61593502591f2fc7452fb0b7c6da575729c4
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:lunar
docker.io/library/ubuntu:lunar

3️⃣ Get the list of your docker images.

sudo docker images

#Output
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
ubuntu       lunar     21098a29e034   5 weeks ago   70.3MB

Create and export a docker container

Once you have the image of Ubuntu 23.04. In the next steps, you can create a docker container from it then export the container for WSL.

1️⃣ From the Linux shell, run the below command to create a container from the Ubuntu 23.04 image the go to the shell of the container.

sudo docker run -it --name ubuntu23 ubuntu:lunar

2️⃣ As you can see below, when the container is created, the prompt change from the Linux shell (on WSL) to the container shell (on docker). From here, you can check the version of the Ubuntu container.

bonben@DESKTOP-K34B7Q9:/mnt/c/Users/admin$ sudo docker run -it --name ubuntu23 ubuntu:lunar
root@4dbae163af51:/# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 23.04"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="23.04"
VERSION="23.04 (Lunar Lobster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=lunar
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
UBUNTU_CODENAME=lunar
LOGO=ubuntu-logo

3️⃣ Type exit then hit Enter to exit the shell of the container to go back to the shell of the Linux instance (on WSL). See below for details.

root@4dbae163af51:/# exit
exit
bonben@DESKTOP-K34B7Q9:/mnt/c/Users/admin$

4️⃣ Now, run docker ps -a on the Linux instance to get the list of the docker containers. You should see the container that created in the step 2.

sudo docker ps -a

#Output
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE          COMMAND       CREATED         STATUS                          PORTS     NAMES
4dbae163af51   ubuntu:lunar   "/bin/bash"   4 minutes ago   Exited (0) About a minute ago             ubuntu23

5️⃣ This is time for exporting the Ubuntu 23.04 container to a .tar file. Below command will export the container named ubuntu23 to /tmp/ubuntu23.tar.

sudo docker export ubuntu23 > /tmp/ubuntu23.tar

You can check the file has been exported by the ls command.

bonben@DESKTOP-K34B7Q9:/mnt/c/Users/admin$ ls -l /tmp/
total 71084
drwx------ 2 root   root       4096 Sep 21 13:35 snap-private-tmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 bonben bonben 72775168 Sep 21 14:17 ubuntu23.tar

6️⃣ From the Windows host, you can see the exported file using the Windows Explorer as below. Everything is ready, you can continue to the last section.

Import .tar file as a WSL instance

We’re nearly done, in the next steps we need to:

1️⃣ Create some new folders for the WSL instance. You can create the folders manually using File Explorer or you can open a new PowerShell window then run the below command.

New-Item D:\WSL, D:\WSL\temp, D:\WSL\ubuntu23 -Type Directory

2️⃣ In the Windows host, copy the exported tar file from the Ubuntu instance to the folder D:\WSL\temp.

3️⃣ From Windows PowerShell (not the Linux shhell), run the following command to import the tar file as a WSL instance.

wsl --import ubuntu23 'D:\WSL\ubuntu23' 'D:\WSL\temp\ubuntu23.tar'

4️⃣ Run wsl -l -v in PowerShell to verify the instance has been created.

PS C:\> wsl -l -v
  NAME        STATE           VERSION
* Debian      Stopped         2
  ubuntu23    Stopped         2
  Ubuntu      Running         2

5️⃣ Run the Ubuntu 23.04 instance with wsl -d ubuntu23 command.

PS C:\> wsl -d ubuntu23
root@DESKTOP-K34B7Q9:/mnt/c# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 23.04"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="23.04"
VERSION="23.04 (Lunar Lobster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=lunar
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"

The virtual disk of the instance should be created in D:\WSL\ubuntu23.

Conclusion

This post shows the way to create an unsupported Linux distribution on WSL using docker. Using this method, you can create any Linux distributions on WSL if they’re supported by Docker.

Not a reader? Watch this related video tutorial: