Magento 2 is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in use today to run very successful online stores. It’s an open-source platform and works great in Linux systems, including Ubuntu. If you’re running Windows and want to use Magento, using Windows with WSL 2 might be your best option and the steps below will show you how to do that. With WSL, you can install a full Linux operating system inside Windows. So get Windows, enable WSL, install a Linux OS and run Magento. Back in 2017, Windows released the original WSL version. WSL 2 is an improvement over version 1 and comes with a performance boost, and full system call compatibility, and is built with a new architecture that delivers features that make WSL an amazing way to run a Linux environment in Windows. If you have a machine that meets the requirements above to run WSL 2, then continue below. To get started with running Magento on Windows with WSL, follow the steps below:

Enable WSL in Windows

To enable WSL in Windows, you will want to open the PowerShell terminal as administrator. Click on Start then begin typing PowerShell. Next, right-click the Windows PowerShell app and choose to run as administrator. When the console opens, run the commands below: After installing, you should get a success message similar to the lines below:

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

WSL 2 requires Windows 10 Virtual Machine Platform to be enabled. This is not Hyper-V. To enable the VM platform feature in Windows, run the commands below from the same PowerShell administrator’s console. If you’re using Windows 10 version lower than 2004, then use the commands below: When you’re done running the commands above, restart your computer for all the configuration changes to apply. If you don’t restart, the below command might not be recognized. After restarting your computer, login back in and launch PowerShell as administrator. Then run the commands below to configure WSL 2 as the default version of WSL.

Install Ubuntu on Windows 10

Now that WSL 2 is installed and ready to be used, open the link below to download and install a copy of Ubuntu 20.04 from the Windows store. Get Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Microsoft Store Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Windows allows you to use Ubuntu Terminal and run Ubuntu command line utilities including bash, ssh, git, apt, and many more. Click the Get button and install. After installing Ubuntu, you’ll want the option to launch Ubuntu from the Windows WSL environment. After launching Ubuntu, it should install and prompt you to create your account. That should do it! Some troubleshooting commands to run when you run into the issues above. These run below and try to launch the Ubuntu image again. Now that Windows 10 WSL environment is ready, continue below to install Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP and configure Magento to run.

Install Nginx HTTP Server

Magento requires a web server to function, and Nginx is one of the most popular open-source web servers available today. To install Nginx on Ubuntu, run the commands below: After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop and start Nginx services. To test whether Nginx is installed and functioning, open your web browser and browse to the server’s IP address or hostname. http://localhost If you see the above page in your browser, then Nginx is working as expected.

Install MariaDB Server

You’ll also need a database server to run Magento. A database server is where Magento content gets stored. A truly open-source database server that you can use with Magento is the MariaDB database server. It is fast, secure and the default server for almost all Linux servers. To install MariaDB, run the commands below: After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable the MariaDB service always to start up when the server boots. Next, run the commands below to secure the database server with a root password if you were not prompted to do so during the installation. When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

Enter current password for root (enter for none): Press the Enter Set root password? [Y/n]: Y New password: Enter password Re-enter new password: Repeat password Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]:  Y Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]:  Y

To verify and validate that MariaDB is installed and working, log in to the database console using the commands below: type the root password when prompted. If you see a similar screen as shown above, then the server was successfully installed.

Magento is a PHP-based application, and PHP is required to run it. Run the commands below to install PHP and related modules to support Magento. After installing PHP, go and configure some basic settings that may be required for Magento to function properly. For this tutorial, PHP 7.4 was installed. Based on your environment, another version of PHP might be installed. So verify that. Below are good settings to configure for most Magento websites. That should get PHP 7.4 installed with some basic settings to allow Magento to function. After setting up PHP, the command below can be used to stop and start PHP7.4 services.

Create Magento Database

When all the servers are installed above, it’s now time to begin setting up the Magento environment. First, run the steps below to create a blank database for Magento to use. Login to the MariaDB database console using the commands below: Then create a database called magentodb Next, create a database user called magentodbuser and set a password Then grant the user full access to the database. Finally, save your changes and exit.

Download Magento

At this point, Magento is ready to be downloaded and installed. Use the commands below to download the latest version of Magento. To get Magento’s latest release you may want to use the GitHub repository… Install Composer, Curl and other dependencies to get started… When prompted, enter your authentication keys. Your public key is your username; your private key is your password….  ( https://marketplace.magento.com/customer/accessKeys/ ) You’ll have to register for an account to create the key above. After installing curl and Composer above, change into the Nginx root directory and download Magento packages from GitHub… Always replace the branch number with the latest branch. To view Magento releases, see this page. Copy and paste the authentication key… (Your public key is your username; your private key is your password) After downloading Magento packages, run the commands below to install Magento with the following options:

The Magento software is installed in the root directory on localhost…. Admin is admin;  therefore: Your storefront URL is http://exmaple.com The database server is on the same localhost as the webserver…. The database name is magentodb, and the magentodbuser and password is db_user_password_here Uses server rewrites The Magento administrator has the following properties: First and last name are: Admin User Username is: admin  and the password is admin123 E-mail address is: admin@example.com Default language is: (U.S. English) Default currency is: U.S. dollars Default time zone is: U.S. Central (America/Chicago)

Elasticsearch is now enabled with Magento packages. If you’re not using it and you run into trouble after running the commands above, use this line to disable the Elasticsearch module. If you want to run Magento with Elasticsearch instead, read this post. After that, run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Magento 2 to function. Then run the command below to allow the www-data user to own the Magento directory.

Configure the Nginx Server block

Below is where you configure the Nginx VirtualHost file for the Magento site you’re creating. This file defines how client requests are handled and processed. Run the commands below to create a new VirtualHost file called Magento in the /etc/nginx/sites-available/ directory. A very good configuration setting for most Magento sites on the Nginx server is below. This configuration should work great. Copy the content below and save it into the file created above. Save the file and exit. After saving the file above, run the commands below to enable the new site, then restart the Nginx server. At this stage, Magento is ready and can be launched by going to the server’s IP or hostname. That should bring up the Magento home page. Log in with the account above and you’re done. That’s it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to install Magento on Windows 10 with Ubuntu. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.