Systemd support has arrived in WSL! This long-awaited upgrade to WSL unlocks a huge number of quality of life features for managing processes and services. This includes snapd support, which enables users to take advantage of all of the tools and apps available on snapcraft.io.
Systemd support is particularly useful for web developers who want to set up and develop service applications inside WSL before deploying them to the cloud. In this post we take you through some best practices on getting started with systemd with this in mind.
For more information on systemd support, including demos of the projects in this post, check out the video above or visit aka.ms/wslsystemd.
How to enable systemd in Ubuntu WSL
Make sure you are running the Microsoft Store version of WSL (version 0.67.6 and higher) to get access to systemd. This is currently available on the latest Windows 11 insiders build ahead of general release later this year.
Inside your Ubuntu instance, add the following…