WSL Web Developer Setup with Fedora 39

A couple of years ago I wrote a guide on setting up a web development environment on WSL using Fedora 35. I wanted to get an up to date version of Fedora to use in WSL so I went back to my guide and the link for the rootfs file was a 404 on the repo linked there.

So, when doing this, the first thing that was a struggle was to find the root file system zip. The GitHub org for Fedora Cloud is (funnily enough) only for the cloud i.e. Docker images. Unlike in the last post where it was a one click download now there’s a bit of digging around to do.

Download the rootfs

A search for “fedora container base” will point to this URL: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=26387 there was a lot of clicking around but eventually I found something to use. If you’re following along, what you need to look for is something like Fedora-Container-Base-39-20240311.0, clicking into that gave me the Image Archives where I can download the x86_64.tar.xz file.

In the .tar.xz file there’s a layer.tar in the first folder of the zip, that’s the file I need to import into WSL.

So, essentially the same instructions from the Fedora 35 guide now with some slight changes!

Import the rootfs

So the PowerShell command to import the file is in five parts, wsl, --import, name, path, layer.tar. The name is the name of the distro, path is the path to the folder where the distro will be stored and layer.tar is the path to the layer.tar file.

So, I create a Fedora-39 folder in my distros folder and then run the command:

wsl --import Fedora-39 C:\Users\scott\distros\Fedora-39\ C:\Users\scott\distros\layer.tar

Done!

Now I can run wsl -l -v to see the distros I have installed and from here (PowerShell) I can specify the distro I want to use with the -d flag:

wsl -d Fedora-39

That opens up the distro as root, so I can add in som e core packages and the default user.

Update and install core packages

Fedora’s package manager is dnf so I can use that to update the system and install some core packages.

I’m using the -y flag to automatically answer yes to any prompts.

# update Fedora
dnf -y update
# install core packages
dnf install -y wget curl sudo nano ncurses dnf-plugins-core dnf-utils passwd findutils

That’s it for the core packages, if you’re following along feel free to add in whatever you need on top of this, for me that’s all I need so I can now I can add a default user.

Add default user

Ok, so I’m not logging in as root each time I want to use the distro, I’m going to add a user to the system.

# create user and add them to sudoers list
useradd -G wheel scott
# set password for user
passwd scott

I’m prompted to give the user a password, once I’ve done that I can then add them to the wheel group so they can use sudo.

There’s a specific config file for WSL where I can add in the user, I’ll create that file with nano:

nano /etc/wsl.conf

Then add in my user:

[user]
default=scott

Save and exit nano, then I can exit the distro and open it again to check that I’m logged in as the user I just created.

So, that would be the following:

# exit the distro
exit
# open the distro again
wsl -d Fedora-39
# check who I'm logged in as
whoami

wslu (WSL Utilities)

Not essential but I’ve had this in the last guide and it’s changed since then so detailing here for prosperity.

You can check out what you get with wslu on the GitHub repo here: https://github.com/wslutilities/wslu

Also the docs site where I got this info from: https://wslutiliti.es/wslu/install.html

Install:

sudo dnf copr enable wslutilities/wslu -y
sudo dnf install wslu -y

That’s it!

Essentially, I’m done here, I can now use the distro as I would any other Linux system. I can install packages, set up my development environment and get to work.

The rest of the stuff detailed now is my preferred setup, you can personalise your setup as you see fit.

Personalisation

So, for me there’s several things that I need, Zsh, Oh My Zsh, Node, NVM, pnpm.

I’ve done a whole guide on my preferred Zsh setup here: https://www.scottspence.com/posts/my-zsh-config

I’m going to detail the process here too.

Install Zsh and Oh My Zsh:

# install zsh
sudo dnf -y install zsh
# install Oh My Zsh
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Following the Oh My Zsh install I’m prompted to change my shell to Zsh, that used to be a bit of a faff, now it does it in the initialisation.

Customise Zsh:

Several things that I install in any new Zsh setup:

• zsh-syntax-highlighting
• zsh-autosuggestions
• Spaceship ZSH

The first two are plugins for Zsh, the last is a theme.

Install the plugins:

# zsh-syntax-highlighting
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
# zsh-autosuggestions
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

In my .zshrc file I need to add the plugins to the list of plugins:

plugins=(
  git
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
  zsh-autosuggestions
)

Then whilst I’m in the .zshrc file I can add the autosuggest config:

ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_HIGHLIGHT_STYLE="fg=#663399,standout"

Next add the Spaceship ZSH theme:

# clone the repo to the Zsh custom theme directory
git clone https://github.com/denysdovhan/spaceship-prompt.git "$ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/spaceship-prompt" --depth=1
# symlink it
ln -s "$ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/spaceship-prompt/spaceship.zsh-theme" "$ZSH_CUSTOM/themes/spaceship.zsh-theme"

Then add in the theme to the .zshrc file:

ZSH_THEME="spaceship"

There’s some errors that I come up against on the regular with Spaceship, an error like this:

async_worker_eval: no such async worker: spaceship

There’s also a warning from upower:

(upower:185): UPower-WARNING **: 18:38:44.618: Cannot connect to upower: Could not connect: No such file or directory

These can be fixed by adding the following to the .zshrc file after the theme line:

ZSH_THEME="spaceship"

# spaceship config
SPACESHIP_PROMPT_ASYNC=false
SPACESHIP_PROMPT_ADD_NEWLINE="true"
SPACESHIP_CHAR_SYMBOL="⚡ "
export SPACESHIP_BATTERY_SHOW=false

Install Node and NVM:

I prefer to use NVM to manage my Node versions, so I’ll install that and then use it to install Node.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.0/install.sh | zsh
source ~/.zshrc
command -v nvm
# sets default to 14
nvm install 18
# nvm alias default 18

Install pnpm:

Then pnpm, I’ve tried adding pnpm via npm in the past and had issues so I use the pnpm install script:

curl -f https://get.pnpm.io/v6.16.js | node - add --global pnpm

SSH keys:

Setting up git, I used to go through moving SSH files from an existing WSL instance over to a new one but it’s just as simple to set up another SSH key and add it to my GitHub account.

I haven’t changed the process for myself in an age, maybe it’s changed, for now I’ll keep following this guide I made a couple of years ago: https://scottspence.com/posts/set-up-ssh-for-use-with-git

Something go wrong? Start over!

Mess up? No problem, just unregister the distro and start over.

wsl --unregister Fedora-39

Conclusion

Yeah, like, that’s it! I know it’s common structure to add a conclusion to the end of the post to go over what happened. So, here’s the cliffs; I dug around on the internet, found the rootfs for and up to date version of Fedora, imported it into WSL, installed some packages and added a user. Personalised it a bit, bipity bopity boo, I’m done!