I have been using WSL and Ubuntu 22.04 a lot more in recent weeks. From virtual environments for Python development to the ability to use Podman to run container images, the tooling supports some of the work I do much better than Windows does.
But Ubuntu 22.04 is old! I love the predictable LTS releases, but two years is an eternity in software, and I was looking forward to the 22.04 release.
Upgrade or Fresh Start?
I looked at a few options for upgrading my existing Ubuntu 22.04 WSL instance, but I really did not like what I read. The guidance basically suggested it was a “try at your own risk” scenario.
I took a quick inventory of what was actually on my WSL image. As it turns out, not too much. Aside from some of my standard profile settings, I only have a few files that were not available in some of my Github repositories. Additionally, since you can have multiple instances of WSL running, the easiest solution I could find was to stand up a new 24.04 image and copy my settings and files over.
Is that it?
Shockingly, yes. Installing 24.04 is as simple as opening it in the Microsoft store and downloading it. Once that was done, I ran through the quick provisioning to setup the basics, and then copied my profile and file.
I was able to utilize scp for most of the copying, although I also realized that I could copy files from Windows using the \\wsl.localhost paths. Either way, it didn’t take very long before I had Ubuntu 24.04 up and running.
I still have 22.04 installed, and I haven’t deleted that image just yet. I figure I’ll keep it around for another month and, if I don’t have to turn it back on, I probably don’t need anything on it.