Fedora Rawhide for WSL

A ready-to-use Fedora Rawhide root filesystem for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2. Install it, create your user, and you're running the latest Fedora.

Fedora Rawhide is the rolling-development branch of Fedora. It always has the latest packages, but it moves fast. This project wraps it into a .wsl archive that stays current with a new automated build every week.

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Features

• Always up to date — a new rootfs is built every Monday from the latest Rawhide repository, so you're never more than a week behind.
• Systemd support — works out of the box on WSL2.
• First-run user setup — on first launch, you create your own user account with passwordless sudo. No pre-baked users, no default passwords.
• WSLg integration — X11, Wayland, and PulseAudio are wired up automatically so Linux GUI apps just work.
• Minimal footprint — only the essentials are included (@core, dnf5, systemd, polkit). You decide what else to install.
• Weekly automated builds — GitHub Actions rebuilds the rootfs every Monday at 6:00 AM UTC and publishes it as a dated release. You can also trigger a build manually at any time.
• Transparent build process — the full build script is in this repository. You can inspect it, modify it, or run it yourself.

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How to Get Started

1. Download the Fedora Rawhide .wsl package:

   • From the GitHub Releases section

2. Install the distro into WSL:

   PowerShell or Windows Terminal from a normal Windows path such as Downloads or C:\WSL:

   wsl --install --from-file C:\path\to\Fedora-Rawhide-WSL.wsl
   

   You can also install it by double-clicking the .wsl file in File Explorer. If you want to override the default registration name, use:

   wsl --install --from-file C:\path\to\Fedora-Rawhide-WSL.wsl --name fedora-rawhide
   

   Avoid launching the installer from a \\wsl.localhost\... path. WSL may try to inherit that UNC working directory when it auto-launches the new distro after installation, which can produce a harmless Failed to translate '\\wsl.localhost\...' warning.

3. Launch Fedora:

   wsl -d fedora-rawhide
   

4. Complete the first-run setup:

   • Enter the username you want to use.
   • Fedora will use that account as the default user with passwordless sudo.

5. Update packages after first boot (recommended):

   sudo dnf5 upgrade
   

   The .wsl image is a snapshot of Rawhide at build time. Running dnf5 upgrade pulls the latest packages.

6. Open VS Code and connect to your Fedora instance through WSL:

   • Install the "Remote - WSL" extension in VS Code.
   • Click on the green >< icon in the lower-left corner and select "Remote-WSL: New Window".
   • From there, you can open the Fedora filesystem and start developing with all the conveniences of VS Code.

7. Verify your WSL version if you still see systemd warnings:

   wsl --version
   

   The .wsl package flow requires WSL 2.4.4 or newer. If you still see Failed to start the systemd user session, update WSL before troubleshooting the distro further.

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First-Run User Setup

The image uses WSL's supported out-of-box experience (OOBE) flow:

• No fixed non-root user is baked into the image.
• The first launch prompts you to create your own default user.
• The created user gets passwordless sudo access via a dedicated sudoers file and is added to the wheel group.
• No password is set during setup — run sudo passwd <username> later if you want one.

Important Note :

The legacy wsl --import flow bypasses the OOBE experience and can still launch the distro as root. Use the .wsl installer flow shown above if you want the first-run user creation to work correctly.

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Releases

Releases are built automatically every week by GitHub Actions on Monday at 6:00 AM UTC and tagged with the build date:

rawhide-2026-07-15-0600
 ^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^
 repo     date     time (UTC)

• New tag on each release — each build is a unique, immutable snapshot.
• Older releases are deleted automatically — only the last 3 months of builds are kept.
• Manual builds — the maintainer can trigger a build at any time from the Actions tab. A same-day build gets a unique time-stamped tag (e.g. rawhide-2026-07-15-1430).

If you downloaded a .wsl file a while ago, just run sudo dnf5 upgrade after first boot to get the latest packages.

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Transparency and Build Steps

This repository also includes the build script used to generate the release artifact:

./rawhide/build-rawhide.sh

The script builds the root filesystem from Fedora Rawhide's rolling repository, applies the WSL overlay, and emits rawhide/Fedora-Rawhide-WSL.wsl.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Fedora is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc., and is used here in a community capacity for educational and practical purposes. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Red Hat.