Arch Linux WSL Bootstrap |

A simple script that generates modified Arch Linux bootstraps to run on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

How do I install it?

Make sure you have Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) correctly installed.
If you haven't installed WSL2, copy the following commands into powershell and restart your machine after you've finished:

wsl --install --no-distribution
wsl --set-default-version 

After you have ensured that WSL2 is correctly installed and configured, just do the following:

wsl --import Arch path\to\virtualdisk path\to\archbootstrap.tar.gz

Replace path\to\virtualdisk with the absolute path where you want to create the virtual hard disk of the distro and replace path\to\archbootstrap.tar.gz with the absolute path to the downloaded bootstrap.

Exemple: I particularly like to save inside the C:\Users\MYUSER\AppData\Roaming\Arch folder, so I run the following command:

wsl --import Arch $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Arch $env:HOMEPATH\Downloads\ArchWSLBootstrap*.tar.gz

$env:HOMEPATH\Downloads is the folder where the downloaded bootstrap is located and $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Arch is where the virtual hard disk of the distro will be created.

Now you can run Arch Linux: wsl -d Arch

Setup after install

• To create a new user (already added to the wheel group) just run the following command:

useradd -m -G wheel {username}

Replace {username} with the username you want.

• To set the password for the root and the user created

passwd

To set up the password of the user you have created, just use the command passwd {username}.

To activate SystemD and set Arch's default user:

• To activate SystemD you need to change false to true in the /etc/wsl.conf file, like this:

[boot]
systemd=true

You can use the following command which will do this automatically sed -i -e "s/systemd=false/systemd=true/" /etc/wsl.conf

• To set a default Arch user, you will also need to edit the /etc/wsl.conf file, just uncomment the [user] section and set your username after default=, like this:

[user]
default={username}

Replace {username} with the username you want.

You need root permission to edit the /etc/wsl.conf file