WSL2 enables some very helpful features and so it is recommended to enable it if your system supports it. We can choose to enable WSL2 if we are the proper version of Windows. If we don’t then we can restart now and install Kali through the Microsoft Store.

If we are setting up WSL2 we will want to skip to the next section. We first will run the following command to enable WSL: dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart We will need to open Powershell as Administrator for the following. We may need to perform a computer restart, but once complete we will have the latest version of Kali Linux installed. To install and setup WSL we can run the command wsl -install -d kali-linux. If we see a number lower than this, we will be unable to use WSL2. 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.

What we are looking for is the number after ‘OS Build’. We can check our build version by pressing WIN+R and then typing in ‘winver’. Windows 11 will be able to skip ahead to Windows 11 as it comes with all of the necessary patches. Depending on what version of Windows we have, we may need to follow different directions when setting up WSL.

Install kali linux on windows 10