Installing Golang on Windows WSL/WSL2

Official Go documentation might not provide the steps to install Go on WSL/WSL2. If you want to install GoLang and set up the development environment, follow these steps:

• Go to https://go.dev/dl/ and check the latest Go version.

• Open your terminal and use the command to download the specific version.
  Note: Replace go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz with the latest version.
  wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

• Unzip:
  sudo tar -xvf go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

• Move to the correct path.
  sudo mv go /usr/local

• Edit the .bashrc file:
  

echo "export GOROOT=/usr/local/go" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export GOPATH=\$HOME/go" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=\$GOPATH/bin:\$GOROOT/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

• Refresh the terminal:
  source ~/.bashrc

• Verify the Go version.
  go version

Happy Learning!!

Comments

[Shrijal Acharya]

Why not use a package manager?

[ShivamS]

Yeah, agree - using a package manager is the easiest and simplest way. But it might have an outdated version available (if using apt). So, manual installation is better if you want the latest version as soon as it’s released, downloading it from go.dev is the best option.