How to setup WSL2 with Windows Terminal, ZSH and powerlevel10k

I wanted to share with you my recent WSL2 setup on my new workstation which was ridiculously easy to do!

What I wanted

Basically I wanted the same setup that I would run on my MacBook and my Linux machines:

A configurable terminal similar to iTerm2 or Tilix
ZSH shell with oh-my-zsh
Powerlevel10k theme
Docker and VS Code support

What you can expect

In the following, I will guide you step by step on how I did my setup. A ZSH shell running inside Windows Terminal with powerlevel10k, syntax highlighting, automatic suggestions and Docker support.

Prerequisites

You will need the Windows 2004 update and you have to enable virtualization on your BIOS.

Step 1: Install WSL2

Basically, you have to follow these steps from the Microsoft Docs
Here are the necessary steps, if you have a fresh installation of Windows 2004:

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands:

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

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

After these two commands, restart your machine and run the next command to set WSL2 as your default version:

# Use WSL2 per default
wsl --set-default-version 2

Step 2: Install a Linux Distribution and Windows Terminal

Visit the Windows Store and install your desired Linux distribution and Windows Terminal. I chose the latest LTS version of Ubuntu for example, which is currently Ubuntu 20.04
After installing your distribution you have to launch it and it will ask you for a username and password

Step 3: Configure Windows Terminal

Open Windows Terminal and open the settings with the Ctrl + , shortcut. You should see the file settings.json
I wanted WSL2 to be my main profile. You can achieve this by copying the guid value of your Linux distribution into defaultProfile
After that I wanted a better colorscheme than the default one. There are some pre-defined ones that you can select from here
The colorscheme on the screenshot is called One Half Dark. To add a colorscheme, expand the profile configuration of your distribution with the key colorScheme and the value of the theme name as a string
Next thing for me was to change the starting directory to my Linux home directory. For that, expand the profile object with "commandline": "wsl.exe ~"
Lastly, since I wanted to use Powerlevel10k, I had to install their recommended font MesloLGS NF. After installing, expand your profile object with "fontFace": "MesloLGS NF"

Ultimately, you should have an object similar to this:

{
    "guid": "{some-value}",
    "hidden": false,
    "name": "Ubuntu-20.04",
    "source": "Windows.Terminal.Wsl",
    "colorScheme": "One Half Dark",
    "fontFace": "MesloLGS NF",
    "commandline": "wsl.exe ~"
}

Step 4: Install oh-my-zsh

$ sudo apt install zsh
$ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

You may want to restart Windows Terminal for a new session.

Step 5: Install useful plugins and configure ZSH

$ git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
$ git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k

Open ~/.zshrc and modify its content like this:

# Use Powerlevel10k theme
ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"

# Use plugins
plugins=(docker zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting)

After setting the theme, the Powerlevel10k wizard should show up, which will guide you through the setup. If it did not show up then try to run p10k configure. More about oh-my-zsh plugins and Powerlevel10k configuration.

Step 6: Docker and VS Code

Docker also supports Windows Home since the 2004 update! Follow their guideline Install Docker Desktop on Windows Home. After the installation Docker should automatically use the WSL2 backend. That was at least the case for me. If it wasn’t for you, then please follow this documentation.

VS Code has of course great support for development inside WSL2 with this extension. The README should be sufficient documentation.

And we’re done 🎉

With this setup you should have a full-blown development setup inside WSL2 and a nice looking Windows Terminal. I am very pleased with this setup and since the last years Microsoft keeps surprising me every time!