Wsl: Add information (references) for Newbies

[SetTrend]

Today I installed WSL for the first time. At the same time I'm installing Linux for the first time. So don't have any clue on how to give a proper user name to the Ubuntu distribution. All I get is this error message:

Installing, this may take a few minutes...
Please create a default UNIX user account. The username does not need to match your Windows username.
For more information visit: https://aka.ms/wslusers
Enter new UNIX username: MyName
adduser: Please enter a username matching the regular expression configured
via the NAME_REGEX[_SYSTEM] configuration variable.  Use the `--force-badname'
option to relax this check or reconfigure NAME_REGEX.
Enter new UNIX username:

What's this fuzz all about?

So, can you please add a reference to a 101 for setting up WSL properly, including setting up the Linux distribution? I don't want to dig into Linux. All I want is to be able to compile GitHub projects, like webpack/webpack.js.org.

Thanks.

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Document Details

⚠ Do not edit this section. It is required for docs.microsoft.com ➟ GitHub issue linking.

• ID: b7a1833a-3461-2d9e-bb1e-de5d0ee3fe33
• Version Independent ID: bd4b2627-60c7-1bfe-7831-1dbde906e287
• Content: Initialize a new WSL Linux distro
• Content Source: WSL/initialize-distro.md
• Product: windows-subsystem-for-linux
• GitHub Login: @taraj
• Microsoft Alias: taraj

[Brian-Perkins]

For this specific issue, it happens that the Ubuntu distribution does not allow upper-case characters in its usernames (3273). This may be useful to document but could also get confusing since it may not apply to all distros in the store.

[SetTrend]

Ah, I see. Thanks for enlightening me!

Still, shouldn't this information be referenced somewhere (probably by linking to a web page already having solved this issue) in a primer for WSL/Linux beginners? (Which, I suppose, "Initialize a new WSL Linux distro" certainly is.)

[webtop]

This is for the Windows Subsystem for Linux...distro agnostic. If you want information about Ubuntu or any other flavor of Linux, there are literally millions of websites devoted to them...for beginners and all other levels.
Information on such should not be placed at the responsibility of Microsoft. They did not create the distro, they created the ability to run the distro in Windows.

[craigloewen-msft]

We try and keep the docs as WSL specific as possible. If you'd like a primer on getting set up with Linux and using WSL I'd recommend checking out the Getting Started with WSL course!.