Upgrade an existing version 1 WSL distro to version 2.

Steps⌗

  • Open a power shell or cmd terminal
  • List distros
wsl --list --verbose

# output
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu                 Running         1
  • Upgrade to version 2

Upgrade can take up to 15 minutes

wsl --set-version <distro-name> 2

# example
wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2
  • Check if the upgrade was successful
wsl --list --verbose

# output
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu                 Running         2