You have to be running Windows 10 version 2004 update or newer. There are lots of walkthroughs, but you install "Ubuntu" or another distro for under WSL via the Windows store.

If you install docker desktop with WSL2 installed, there's a configuration setting to "use wsl2" it may still be labelled beta as a feature. But it does work better.

I'm using the new Windows Terminal, and my default is set to WSL2 Ubuntu... for all intent and purpose, I launch VS Code from a wsl2 prompt/directory and it's connected into "linux" ... my terminal and code terminal/directory are in linux, and I use it like any linux distro from that pov. The desktop is windows, but almost everything I work in is via Linux under WSL2.