Officially CasaOS runs on Linux only, and there is no Windows version (and not likely to have one in near future). This means that to run CasaOS on Windows 10/11 you would need an Linux environment running on top of it. It can be a Linux virtual machine via Hyper-V, or it can be the WSL2 that comes with Windows.

This post is about how to run CasaOS under Windows with help of WSL2.

Install WSL2

If you already have WSL2 running, make sure you have the latest version. You would need to update WSL2 to latest version to have this support by running wsl.exe --update.

1. Install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) by following the instructions in the Microsoft documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
2. Install a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Store. There are several options available, such as Ubuntu, Debian, and Kali Linux.

Enable systemd support

You would need to enable systemd support in WSL2, to keep the modularized CasaOS services running in the background. Add these lines to the /etc/wsl.conf of the Linux distribution you are running in WSL2:

[boot]
systemd=true

Afteward, you run wsl.exe --shutdown and wsl.exe again to restart WSL2.

See https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/systemd-support-is-now-available-in-wsl/ for details.

Install Docker under WSL2

If you are already using Docker on Windows, most likely you are using Docker for Desktop which integrates with WSL2. However that means the Docker engine is running aside from WSL2, so you can run docker command under every WSL2 distribution as well as Windows command prompt. We would need to replace it with a locally running Docker engine.

See https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian for the actual steps of installing Docker engine locally, or or https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu if you are running Ubuntu.

Install CasaOS

Once you have completed the prerequisites above, you can install CasaOS by running the following command:

curl -fsSL get.casaos.io/install.sh | sudo bash

If the installation is successful, you should be able to access the CasaOS login prompt by visiting http://localhost (port 80 by default) in your web browser.

Key Takeaways

• Install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and a Linux distribution on your Windows 10 system.
• Enable systemd support in WSL2.
• Install Docker on the Linux distribution in WSL2.
• Install CasaOS by running the curl -fsSL get.casaos.io/install.sh | sudo bash command.

Caveats

• Storage management is not possible in WSL2, as it is essentially a light virtual machine.

We hope this guide is helpful for users who are interested in running CasaOS on Windows 10 with WSL2. Let us know at https://discord.gg/Gx4BCEtHjx if you have any questions or if you need further assistance.