Microsoft and Canonical have collaborated to add systemd support to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, allowing a greater number of compatible applications to be installed .
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systemd is a Linux software application that acts as a system and service manager to initialize services at operating system startup. Systemd also supports tools that allow administrators to easily manage and control these services after they have started.
Since systemd is responsible for starting all other services, it runs as the first process (PID 1) created by the Linux kernel at boot time. After that, all other initial startup services are started and managed by systemd.
As WSL currently uses init as its system and service manager, Linux applications that require systemd, such as Snap, microk8s (Kubernetes), and systemctl, do not work properly.
However, the latest preview version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 11 Insider builds now supports systemd, allowing you to install applications that require service management.
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If you are running a Windows 11 Insider build, you can upgrade to WSL Preview 0.67.6 or later using the wsl –update. Once the update is complete, you can check the installed version using the wsl –version.
Now you need to enable systemd by booting your desired WSL Linux distribution and adding the following lines to /etc/wsl.conf:
[boot]
systemd=true
Since the /etc folder is owned by root, you need to use sudo with your favorite console editor to edit the file. For example, sudo vi /etc/wsl.conf.
It should be noted that this process must be done for each distribution you want to enable systemd on.
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Now close the WSL distribution window and from the Windows 11 command prompt (Command Prompt or PowerShell), shut down the WSL distributions with the command wsl.exe –shutdown. Restart the Linux distribution and you will see that systemd is running as PID 1, indicating that it is running as a service and system manager for WSL.
