Microsoft has introduced the release of a layer to run Linux applications on Windows — WSL 1.0.0 (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which is marked as the first stable release of the project. Along with the WSL packages delivered through the Microsoft Store, the experimental development tag has been removed.
The commands 'wsl --install' and 'wsl --update' are now defaulted to use the Microsoft Store for installing and updating WSL, significantly speeding up the delivery of updates compared to distributing it as a built-in Windows component. To return to the old installation scheme in the wsl utility, the option '--inbox' has been proposed. Additionally, support for builds for Windows 10 has been provided through the Microsoft Store, allowing users of this platform to access new WSL features like running graphical Linux applications and supporting the system manager systemd.
The updated wsl.exe utility, now defaulted to load from the Microsoft Store, is included in the November updates for Windows 10 and 11 '22H2', which are currently only installed after manual checking (Windows Settings -> 'Check for Updates'), and will be applied automatically in mid-December. Alternatively, msi packages hosted on GitHub can also be used for installation.
To ensure the execution of Linux binaries in WSL, an environment with a full Linux kernel is provided instead of the originally used emulator that translated Linux system calls into Windows system calls. The kernel offered for WSL is based on the Linux 5.10 kernel release, which has been extended with WSL-specific patches that include optimizations to reduce kernel boot time, lower memory consumption, return memory freed by Linux processes back to Windows, and keep a minimal set of drivers and subsystems in the kernel.
The kernel runs in a Windows environment using a virtual machine already utilized in Azure. The WSL environment operates in a separate disk image (VHD) with an ext4 file system and a virtual network adapter. User space components are installed separately and are based on builds from various distributions. For example, in the Microsoft Store, builds of Ubuntu, Debian GNU/Linux, Kali Linux, Fedora, Alpine, SUSE, and openSUSE are available for installation in WSL.
In version 1.0, around 100 bugs have been fixed and several new features have been implemented:
- An optional feature for using the system manager systemd in Linux environments has been provided. Support for systemd reduces the requirements for distributions and makes the WSL environment closer to the situation of running distributions on standard hardware. Previously, to work in WSL, distributions had to utilize the Microsoft-provided init handler running under PID 1 to set up the infrastructure for interaction between Linux and Windows.
- For Windows 10, the capability to run Linux graphical applications has been implemented (previously, graphical support was only available in Windows 11).
- The command "wsl --install" has been added with the option "--no-launch" to disable the launch of the distribution after installation.
- The commands "wsl --update" and "wsl --install" have been added with the option "--web-download" to download components via GitHub instead of the Microsoft Store.
- The command "wsl --mount" has been enhanced with the options "--vhd" for mounting VHD files and "--name" for specifying the mount point name.
- The commands "wsl --import" and "wsl --export" have been updated with the command "--vhd" for importing or exporting in the VHD format.
- The command "wsl --import-in-place" has been added to register and use an existing .vhdx file as a distribution.
- The command "wsl --version" has been introduced to display the version number.
- Error handling has been improved.
- The components for supporting graphical applications (WSLg) and the Linux kernel have been integrated into a single package, eliminating the need to download additional MSI files.
A hotfix has been released for WSL 1.0.1 (currently marked as Pre-release), which addresses the hanging of the wslservice.exe process when starting a new session, the file with the unix socket /tmp/.X11-unix has been changed to read-only mode, and error handlers have been improved.
Source: opennet.ru
