wsl-distrod VS WSL2-Linux-Kernel

Systemd works even in the non-store Windows 10 using https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod

In case you're using an older version of WSL that doesn't support systemd, you can give Distrod a try.

It uses snapd (so in turn, systemd) so maybe that's what you missed. Up until the WSL update that brought systemd support I've been using distrod to have systemd in my WSL2 distros so it went all smoothly for me.

I use distrod to get a wsl instance of Arch running. It's nice to have (some) systemd functionality with it ;)

You don't need Docker Desktop to install Linux distros as your WSL2 systems. For Arch there's https://github.com/yuk7/ArchWSL and if you want systemd too then use this one instead https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod/ (not specific to just Arch). Also any OCI compliant rootfs tarball goes really, you can use Docker or Podman to export images as tarballs & import them as WSL distros and vice versa. Just telling in case all you want is a distro and not a container engine like Docker running.

You can install the snap version if you have snap running (duh) so, I recommend you to either add systemd to your Ubuntu or make a new Ubuntu installation, both with this one: https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod/.

Not sure on the specifics for why it won’t install for you, but I’d recommend trying a tool called distrod regardless. You can get Ubuntu Jammy with it and it makes the distro support systemd.

Install the resolvconf package and write the nameserver etc lines into /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base file instead (or depending on your needs, use systemd by using a tool like Distrod and edit /etc/systemd/resolved.conf instead).

I used Distrod tool to install WSL that has extra features like systemd, auto-start and port forwarding ability.

https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod I use this at work with Gentoo and it's worked fine.

By the way, Microsoft publishes the WSL kernel source, under GPL, as they must: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel

From here on out it gets a bit hazy. For kernel builds you will have to use the Microsoft Linux Kernel (don't laugh, it's actually a thing). The USBIPD project walks through a WSL kernel build, so you can use that as a guide of sorts. Once you've done everything you need with the disk, the Gentoo project shows how to import it, but if you already have the VHDX file, I think the import-in-place option may be simpler. Take care in CH2 when making the filesystem. I'm not sure if WSL want's only one ext4 partition or if it walks the disk looking for root. There may be some .wslconfig settings for this, my first guess would be kernelCommandLine.

This was true for WSL1, but WSL2 does contain a Linux kernel. The source code for it is available at:

https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel

git clone --branch mytag0.1 --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel use tag for your version

But if you need a custom kernel then build it by taking Microsoft's kernel config as your base and then set the following up accordingly in your %USERPROFILE%\.wslconfig file:

It uses a customized version of the Linux kernel (repo) that integrates with the host Windows OS. You can build any distro on top of that kernel, as people have done with (of course) Arch. The distro isn't any less "real" than a distro that it run on QEMU (and with a level 1 hypervisor, all systems that uses one are technically virtualized already).

I recompiled the kernel using sources from https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel with experimental genpatches applied.

KERNVER=$(uname -r | cut -f 1 -d'-') git clone --branch linux-msft-$KERNVER --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.git ~/kern-$KERNVER zcat /proc/config.gz > ~/kern-$KERNVER/.config make -C ~/kern-$KERNVER -j 4 make -C ~/kern-$KERNVER -j 4 modules_install ln -s /lib/modules/$KERNVER-microsoft-standard-WSL2+ /lib/modules/$KERNVER-microsoft-standard-WSL2