TL;DR: Open a terminal with admin rights and execute the following command: wsl --install. If you want to choose a distro, continue reading!

Until very recently, you had to go through multiple steps to enable WSL in your system. The worst part was that some of them were in the control panel, others in a terminal, and you also had to use the Microsoft Store to choose the Linux distribution you wanted.

With the recent changes they've made for the release of both Windows 11 and the latest Windows 10 update, installing WSL has become a straightforward task.

You only need to run one command if you're happy with using Ubuntu as your Linux distribution:

wsl --install

If you prefer another distribution, with this other command, you can list all the available distros:

wsl --list --online

And then, run the installation command:

wsl --install -d <distro name>

That's it! You'll have to restart your computer, and then it will ask you for a username and password. Once you create your user, the process will be completed.