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Installing Ubuntu 26.04 on WSL

Last night, Canonical released the first snapshot of its upcoming operating system, codenamed Resolute Raccoon. The list of available distributions in the WSL project's repository traditionally includes only stable, long-term supported versions of Ubuntu. 26.04 will be an LTS, and it will be added to the list in April next year, after the official release.

However, builds of versions newer than the latest LTS release, Ubuntu 24.04, including Ubuntu 26.04 for WSL, are available at cdimage.ubuntu.com and releases.ubuntu.com. To use them, the distribution must be downloaded and installed manually.

Creating and connecting a custom distribution list makes it possible to install the latest Ubuntu versions in the same way as any official one, using the standard installation mechanism:

wsl --install <DistroName>

Manifest creation

To add Ubuntu 26.04, a JSON manifest must be created, for example distributions.json, with the following content:

{
  "ModernDistributions": {
    "Ubuntu": [
      {
        "Name": "Ubuntu-26.04",
        "FriendlyName": "Ubuntu 26.04",
        "Default": false,
        "Amd64Url": {
          "Url": "https://releases.ubuntu.com/26.04-snapshot1/ubuntu-26.04-wsl-amd64.wsl",
          "Sha256": "c77c9e8a5b0255cd02f5edbcd612663976d995980107ce116b2b61f9244cce79"
        },
        "Arm64Url": {
          "Url": "https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/26.04/snapshot1/ubuntu-26.04-wsl-arm64.wsl",
          "Sha256": "b5cfd80f3f90c4d7c95f680455eda660a1198515abbbe13080be70b274108d09"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

The file can be saved locally or published in any repository or web resource.

Manifest registration

The manifest is configured via the following Windows registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss

Two values are supported:

  • DistributionListUrl: replaces the default distribution list
  • DistributionListUrlAppend: adds additional distributions to the default list

The key is added with the following commands (run as administrator):

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss" `
  -Name DistributionListUrlAppend `
  -Value "<URL>" `
  -Type String -Force

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss" ^
/v "DistributionListUrlAppend" ^
/t REG_MULTI_SZ ^
/d "<URL>" ^
/f

Info

Replace <URL> with the actual file path.

Example:

https://example.org/distributions.json

Or local:

file:///C:/Users/<UserName>/distributions.json

After adding the registry key, the list of distributions can be checked with:

wsl --list --online

Ready-to-use manifest

A ready-to-use manifest with additional distributions is available in the wsl-configs repository.

Added distributions:

  • Rocky Linux 10.1
  • Ubuntu 25.04
  • Ubuntu 25.10
  • Ubuntu 26.04 (Snapshot 1)

The file can be downloaded and connected locally or from the repository using the command (run as administrator):

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss" `
  -Name DistributionListUrlAppend `
  -Value "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greengorych/wsl-configs/main/distributions/distributions.json" `
  -Type String -Force

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss" ^
/v "DistributionListUrlAppend" ^
/t REG_MULTI_SZ ^
/d "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greengorych/wsl-configs/main/distributions/distributions.json" ^
/f