Cannot run PowerShell 7.7.0 Preview 2 on AlmaLinux 8 with WSL 2.9.4.0

[DidierDonner-AspenTech]

Windows Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26200.8875]

WSL Version

2.9.4.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

No response

Distro Version

AlmaLinux-8

Other Software

PowerShell 7.7.0 Preview 2 downloaded from https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.7.0-preview.2/powershell-7.7.0-preview.2-linux-x64.tar.gz

Repro Steps

• Install WSL 2.9.4.0 and an AlmaLinux-8 distribution ( I have not tested other distributions)
• uncompress the powershell-7.7.0-preview.2-linux-x64.tar.gz archiev
• try to run pwsh, it fails
  This is a regression compared to WSL 2.9.3.0

Expected Behavior

The shell for PowerShell starts and I get the PSWH prompt and my normal PowerShell environment

PowerShell 7.7.0-preview.2
PS /home/donner>

Actual Behavior

I get a very long stack trace:
[donner@Machine PowerShell-7.7.0-Preview.2]$ ./pwsh
Process terminated.
Encountered infinite recursion while looking up resource 'Argument_CultureNotSupported' in System.Private.CoreLib. Verify the installation of .NET is complete and does not need repairing, and that the state of the process has not become corrupted.
at System.Environment.FailFast(System.Runtime.CompilerServices.StackCrawlMarkHandle, System.String, System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ObjectHandleOnStack, System.String)
at System.Environment.FailFast(System.Threading.StackCrawlMark ByRef, System.String, System.Exception, System.String)
at System.Environment.FailFast(System.String)
at System.SR.InternalGetResourceString(System.String)
at System.SR.GetResourceString(System.String)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo..ctor(System.String, Boolean)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureByName(System.String)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetUserDefaultCulture()
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InitializeUserDefaultCulture()
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InitializeUserDefaultUICulture()
at System.Resources.ResourceManager.GetString(System.String, System.Globalization.CultureInfo)
at System.SR.InternalGetResourceString(System.String)
at System.SR.GetResourceString(System.String)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo..ctor(System.String, Boolean)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureByName(System.String)
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetUserDefaultCulture()
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InitializeUserDefaultCulture()
at System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InitializeUserDefaultUICulture()
at Microsoft.PowerShell.UnmanagedPSEntry.Start(System.String[], Int32)
at Microsoft.PowerShell.ManagedPSEntry.Main(System.String[])
Aborted

Diagnostic Logs

This is a regression compared to WSL 2.9.3.0: PowerShell works well with that version

[github-actions]

No logs.etl found in the archive. Make sure that you ran collect-wsl-logs.ps1 as administrator and that the logs.etl file is in the archive.

Diagnostic information

appxpackage.txt not found
optional-components.txt not found
No logs.etl found in archive.
Error while parsing the logs. See action page for details

[DidierDonner-AspenTech]

WslLogs-2026-07-16_16-11-17.tar.gz

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

Detected appx version: 2.9.4.0

[chemwolf6922]

Hi @DidierDonner-AspenTech , This is a regression introduced in #40940. Where the env LANG is set to "en_US.UTF-8" instead of en_US.UTF-8 in AlmaLinux.
Before we create and publish a fix. You could manually set the env LANG to the correct value without the quoting before running pwsh.

[DidierDonner-AspenTech]

Hello @chemwolf6922

thank you of the fix of setting the LANG environment variable to the unquoted value, it does solve my issue.
I am good to go using WSL 2.9.4.0 now

Thank you