Start by following this guide: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10. Another nice resource is the blog post Setting up WSL2 and Oh My Zsh.
When running the dism.exe commands during setup you may get an error saying that you need elevated permissions, even if you run PowerShell as admin, you then need to run this command first to get elevated permissions:
Start-Process powershell -Verb runAsAfter setting up WSL2 and Windows Terminal, confirm that you have internet connection:
ping google.comIf this does not work, you may need to change how DNS is resolved, see this GitHub issue: microsoft/WSL#5336
You can now install Windows Docker Desktop and make it use WSL2 as backend. If you get errors with permission denied when running docker commands in WSL2, you may need to add yourself in the docker group: sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
Some usefull software you may want to install:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install fd-find silversearcher-ag unzip tree
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_current.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejsIf you want IntelliJ, follow the guide Using WSL 2 to develop Java application on Windows. I had firewall toubles with VcXsrv, this issue answer may fix it (running the troubleshooter) if you got the Windows permissions to run it. Even more troubleshooting here: https://github.com/cascadium/wsl-windows-toolbar-launcher/blob/master/README.md#troubleshooting
VSCode has built in support for WSL2 (remote extension), so that could be installed directly in Windows and used to edit files in WSL2 (as you may already to with files in Docker containers).