This guide was kindly brought to you by @AriaHiroshi

-- Introduction --

The goal of this guide is to set up everything you need to compile custom Zelda actor overlay files on Ubuntu and WSL on windows 10. If you are looking for a guide geared towards Windows specifically, use this one instead.

-- WSL --

Go download Ubuntu from the Microsoft store. Any Linux Distro will work but you need to substitute commandline instructions that reflect the distribution of choice. This guide will be using the plain Ubuntu version but LTS should work.

Now to enable WSL open PowerShell as Administrator and run: Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux. After that reboot windows.

You are now able to run Ubuntu from the start menu. It will install the basic bash. This will take 5 - 20 minutes depending on your specs. When done it will ask you to create a new Username and password. This is separate from your windows account. Then type in sudo apt-get update to make sure your system is up to date.

Note: NEVER edit WSL's director with any program outside of a terminal including file explorer cmd and powershell. YOU WILL KILL WSL. Fortunately window has an alternative terminal that is tabbed and starts wsl in your windows home directory at https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases or the windows store.
If you are unfamiliar with how the command line works, you basically type commands and press the return/enter key on your keyboard to execute them. You're also able to copy and paste, but be careful to copy and paste only one line at a time. When you're prompted with a Y/N prompt, type Y before pressing the return key to say "yes", or N for "no". if it asks for a password and you enter characters the input is accepted but invisible for security reasons.

First, type

and press the return key. Type Y for yes and press the return key to install.

Now do all of the following, one line at a time:

Note: adding --enable-vc will enable some virtual console compatibility if you wish to.

-- z64ovl --

The last thing to do before closing this window is to copy and paste the following:

Any time you want to update z64ovl, copy and paste those commands into the Terminal.

-- nOVL --

Now we need to get nOVL

to build it yourself type this one command at a time:



or, download novl-wsl.zip (here), and extract novl into /opt/n64/bin/

-- Bashrc --

to export a path in the commandline we will use nano since it works on both ubuntu and wsl. It looks scary but we will venture together. DO NOT EDIT BASHRC IN WINDOW ITSELF DO IT IN WSL ITSELF WSL WILL DIE.

do the following:


In nano, you can go to the end of the file by pressing down on your keyboard.

at the end type the following at the last line:


then press F2, then Y and enter save and quit, then reload bash with the following.


Now you should be all set.

-- Closing --

To test if your installation works, follow the guide Custom Actor Overlay Workflow*.

* but instead of right clicking you need to cd to your make file

to navigate up a folder just do cd ../

and to go up a folder do a cd folder/