Preparing a system for WSL

What version of Windows?

Depending on what version of Windows we have, we may need to follow different directions when setting up WSL. Windows 11 will be able to skip ahead to Windows 11 as it comes with all of the necessary patches.

Windows 10

We can check our build version by pressing WIN+R and then typing in ‘winver’. We will be shown a page like this:

What we are looking for is the number after ‘OS Build’. If we see the number ‘19041’ or a number higher, like is shown in the screenshot, we note this down and proceed to Windows 10. If we see a number lower than this, we will be unable to use WSL2.

Setting up WSLWindows 11

To install and setup WSL we can run the command wsl --install -d kali-linux. We may need to perform a computer restart, but once complete we will have the latest version of Kali Linux installed.

Windows 10

We will need to open Powershell as Administrator for the following.

We first will run the following command to enable WSL:

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

If we are setting up WSL2 we will want to skip to the next section. If we don’t then we can restart now and install Kali through the Microsoft Store.

Setting up WSL2

We can choose to enable WSL2 if we are the proper version of Windows. WSL2 enables some very helpful features and so it is recommended to enable it if your system supports it.

If we have a Windows 11 system or are build 19041 and higher, which we discovered in the previous section, then we are able to skip to enabling WSL2 with set version. Otherwise, we press WIN+R and launch ‘winver’ again. This time we are checking to see if we fall under the following:

For x64 systems: Version 1903 or later, with Build 18362 or later. For ARM64 systems: Version 2004 or later, with Build 19041 or later.

Enabling WSL2 with set version

We first check to see if we are already set to WSL2 with the following command ran through Powershell:

Get-ItemPropertyValue `
      -Path HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss `
      -Name DefaultVersion

The output will either be a 1 or a 2. If it is two then we can leave it be. Otherwise we run the following command:

wsl --set-default-version 2

Once we are happy we can choose to install Kali through the command wsl --install -d kali-linux if we are using Windows 11 or otherwise we can install it through the Microsoft Store!

Enabling WSL2 manually

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

After this we restart our computer.

Next we download an update for Windows from the following: Here if we are on an x64 system or Here if we are on an ARM64 system

Now we launch Powershell as administrator and run the following command:

wsl --set-default-version 2

Now just install Kali through the Microsoft Store to finish setup!