Installing Bun JS on WSL Ubuntu in Windows 10/11

Steps to installing Bun JS on Windows 10, or Windows 11, WSL with Ubuntu. Are you running into similar errors? Here's a quick fix for it.

1. Problem
2. Fix
3. Install

Problem

After install bun in my WSL Ubuntu terminal I was getting these errors when trying to run it with the 'bun' command:

user@MyMachine:~$ bun
bun: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.27' not found (required by bun)
bun: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29' not found (required by bun)
bun: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.25' not found (required by bun)
bun: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.27' not found (required by bun)
bun: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28' not found (required by bun)
    

I was attempting to run Bun in Windows Subsystem for Linux with Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS.

Fix

The missing references are from a newer version of the standard C libraries, available in a newer version of Ubuntu. Installing Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will resolve the error.

1. Check your current version by typing the following command in the Ubuntu terminal:
   lsb_release -a
2. Go to the Windows Start Menu and launch the Microsoft Store.
   
3. Download Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or later
   
4. Once it's installed, start a terminal session in it, if it hasn't already launched itself.
5. Install Bun with these terminal commands (from https://bun.sh)

   sudo apt install unzip
   curl https://bun.sh/install | bash
         

6. After the following the onscreen instructions. You can now run Bun on WSL in Windows 10/11:

   bun

   
   

   user@MyMachine:~$ bun
   bun: a fast bundler, transpiler, JavaScript Runtime and package manager for web software.
   
   dev       ./a.ts ./b.jsx        Start a bun Dev Server
   bun       ./a.ts ./b.jsx        Bundle dependencies of input files into a .bun
   
   create    next ./app            Start a new project from a template (bun c)
   run       test                  Run JavaScript with bun, a package.json script, or a bin
   install                         Install dependencies for a package.json (bun i)
   add       contentlayer          Add a dependency to package.json (bun a)
   remove    backbone              Remove a dependency from package.json (bun rm)
   
   upgrade                         Get the latest version of bun
   completions                     Install shell completions for tab-completion
   discord                         Open bun's Discord server
   help                            Print this help menu
         

*Note

If you get the following error:

Command 'bun' not found
  

You may have missed the post-install instructions to add the below to your environment initialisation file (replace YOUR_USERNAME):

BUN_INSTALL="/home/<__YOUR_USERNAME__>/.bun"
PATH="$BUN_INSTALL/bin:$PATH"