CachyOS on WSL

CachyOS provides an image for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It is maintained in the cachyos-wsl repository, where you can also report image-specific bugs.

Installation

You need WSL 2 version 2.4.4 or newer, which you can update with wsl --update. For older versions, see the cachyos-wsl README.

Download the .wsl image from the latest release, or in PowerShell:

$v = (Invoke-RestMethod https://api.github.com/repos/CachyOS/cachyos-wsl/releases/latest).tag_name
Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/CachyOS/cachyos-wsl/releases/download/$v/cachyos-$v.wsl" -OutFile "$env:TEMP\cachyos.wsl"

Install it by double-clicking the file, or in PowerShell:
Terminal window
```
wsl --install --from-file "$env:TEMP\cachyos.wsl"
```
Start CachyOS from the Start menu, or with wsl -d cachyos.

First setup

The first launch can take a few minutes. It sets up the pacman keyring, ranks the mirrors, switches to the optimized packages and asks you to create your user, which has sudo access and uses fish as its shell.

Images are only built periodically, so run sudo pacman -Syu once it is done.

Optimized packages

The image is generic and runs on any x86-64 CPU. Like the CachyOS installer, the first setup then switches to the best optimized repositories for your CPU: znver4, v4 or v3. Older CPUs stay on the generic packages.

If the switch fails, for example because you are offline, the setup continues with the generic packages. To try again:

sudo /usr/lib/wsl/optimize-repos

Differences from a regular installation

WSL always runs the Microsoft kernel, so linux-cachyos, its schedulers and sched-ext are not used. The image also has no boot manager, chwd or zram.

Troubleshooting

If pacman says a reboot is recommended, restart the distribution from PowerShell with wsl --terminate cachyos.

To start over, remove the distribution with wsl --unregister cachyos and install it again.