WSL

Notes on running NixOS on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL, WSL2).

Setup

Ensure that WSL is installed and up to date.

wsl --install
wsl --update

Sometimes you'll have to install WSL2 manually by downloading the msi-installation package.

NixOS is not yet packaged as a official WSL distribution or on the Microsoft store. Download the latest release of nixos.wsl from the NixOS-WSL Github page.

Double-click the file you just downloaded (requires WSL >= 2.4.4).

Usage

Start it with PowerShellː

wsl -d NixOS

Tips and tricks

Run container on startup

To run the distro NixOS on Windows startup or user login in the background, use these commands in PowerShellː

echo "" > $HOME\run_wsl2_at_startup.vbs
notepad $HOME\run_wsl2_at_startup.vbs

Inside the script we define NixOS as the distribution name, as imported in the setup step above.

≡︎ $HOME\run_wsl2_at_startup.vbs

set object = createobject("wscript.shell") 
object.run "wsl.exe --distribution NixOS", 0

Open the task schedulerː

taskschd.msc

Click on Create task on the right pane, set name to WSL. On the tab "Triggers" click on "New ..." and select "run task on user login" in the dropdown menu. On the tab "Action" click on "New ..." and insert as command: %USERPROFILE%\run_wsl2_at_startup.vbs