Developers can access the power of both Windows and Linux at the same time on a Windows machine. The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets developers install a Linux distribution (such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Kali, Debian, Arch Linux, etc) and use Linux applications, utilities, and Bash command-line tools directly on Windows, unmodified, without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dualboot setup.

You must be running Windows 10 22H2 (Build 19041 or higher) or Windows 11 to have WSL Capabilities on your Windows machine.

• Windows 10/11
• (Feature) Windows Subsystem for Linux
• (Feature) Virtual Machine Platform

To enable the Virtual Machine Platform and Windows Subsystem for Linux features on your Windows machine using the command line, you can use the DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) tool. Here are the steps and commands to do that:

You can run the following complete script to enable both features and then restart your system:

# Enable Virtual Machine Platform
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

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

# Restart the computer
Restart-Computer

If you don't familiar with DISM and decide to run Powershell, you can run this command:

# Enable Virtual Machine Platform
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform -NoRestart

# Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux -NoRestart

# Restart the computer
Restart-Computer

Make sure you have all requierements above to running Linux on your Windows machine. Run this command to get latest version of WSL.

wsl --update

After the installation process is finished, restart your computer! list all available distribution that can be installed in with:

wsl --list --online

ArchLinux became an officially supported WSL distribution in March 2025, and I'm happy to check it out.

wsl --install archlinux

# Get install
wsl --install archlinux
# Turn off WSL
wsl --shutdown -d [distro]
# Terminating distro
wsl --terminate -d [distro]
# Uninstall distro
wsl --unregister -d [distro]

Locale are used by glibc and other locale-aware programs or libraries for rendering text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specific standards.

To display the currently set locale and its related environmental settings, type:

locale

to list all enabled locales, type:

locale --all-locales

set the default locale

echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
echo "LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8" >> /etc/environment
locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

This operation will configure Elevated Rights for Non-Root Users. By default, WSL launches as the root user. This step grants your user account elevated privileges to run commands without sudo.

Install sudo, git, vim and vi as prerequisites

pacman -S sudo git vim vi

To modify sensitive system files, which is visudo, run the following commands as the root user. If you're currently logged in as a different user, first elevate privileges by executing:

sudo su

And then, execute these conmands:

# Give the user sudo acceess
EDITOR=vi visudo
# Scroll down and Uncomment this line
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
# alternative oneliner command
echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel

sudo visudo -c

Congratulation Pal! Now your user has sudo access and could eliminate any commands.

When you first launch WSL, you’re automatically logged in as root. To give the root user a password, type:

passwd

Type carefully: Password characters are invisible. Use a strong password (12+ chars, mix of cases/numbers/symbols).

So let's create a new users using following command, the command would create a directory based on your username, input your username into groups, and set bash as default login shell.

useradd --create-home --groups wheel --shell /bin/bash yourusername
passwd yourusername

To setup default user in WSL is kinda different with OG Arch Linux. Set default user login by edit /etc/wsl.conf file and write down this letter:

[user]
default=yourusername

echo "[user]" | sudo tee -a /etc/wsl.conf
echo "default=yourusername" | sudo tee -a /etc/wsl.conf

If you're lost, you can use this PowerShell command to set default user-login. ensure that the user has been created.

wsl --manage archlinux --set-default-user <username>

The change will apply at the next session. To terminate your current session, run the following command in a PowerShell prompt:

wsl --terminate archinux

pacman stands for Package Manager is the default on your arch system. WSL is sutomatically generate keyring so you dont have to do this anymore.

sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -Su

Update all of packages repo(s) and upgrade them. It's like running sudo apt-update && sudo apt-full-upgrade in Ubuntu

sudo pacman -Syuu

sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf

Color
VerbosePkgLists
ParallelDownloads=5
ILoveCandy

In the other hand, yay and paru is an Arch User Repository (AUR). AUR is a community driven repository by Arch users. If you want to add yay and paru as alternative to pacman, do these steps:

# yay
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

# paru 
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si

There's several programs to make everything running properly. Here's the list of configured packages of the dotfiles.

# Code Editor
sudo pacman -Sy vi vim neovim nano

# Shell(s)
bash bash-completion fish zsh zsh-autocomplete zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-hightlighting zsh-history-substring-search

# CLI Tools
sudo pacman -Sy bat fzf fd ripgrep zoxide stow eza curl wget zip unzip jq trash-cli tmux lazygit starship git-delta

# Fonts
sudo pacman -Sy ttf-firacode-nerd ttf-hack-nerd 

# Neovim dependencies
sudo pacman -Sy --needed neovim git wget curl lazygit base-devel fzf ripgrep fd

# Some interesting tools
googler #cli-browser
xdg-user-dirs # well-known directory

### ONELINER ###
sudo pacman -Sy base-devel vim neovim bash bash-completion fish zsh zsh-autocomplete zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting zsh-history-substring-search bat fzf fd ripgrep zoxide stow eza curl wget zip unzip jq trash-cli tmux lazygit starship git-delta

# Miscellaneous
yay -S shell-color-scripts-git # show unique ASCII

Seting up everything from scratch will take a long time. There's several ways to automate task in Linux and UNIX system. However, we will take the dotfiles method which is popular method around Linux community to automate simple even complex tasks.

I use stow as my dotfiles manager. Stow is a GNU utility that organizes configuration files into a central directory and creates symbolic links to their proper system locations.

# Dotfiles Installation
git clone https://github.com/alarwasyi98/dotfiles ~/.dotfiles
cd .dotfiles

stow .
# or
stow <apps> # i.e stow nvim | and so on