Microsoft has released an update to the WSL 2.6.0 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) toolkit, which allows you to run Linux applications on Windows. Version 2.6.0 is marked as the first release after the WSL command-line utilities, background processes for Linux environments, and services for running a virtual machine were made available under the MIT license. Before that, the code for the WSL components related to the Linux kernel and the wslg graphics stack was open source, and all the accompanying tools were proprietary. The changes in version 2.6.0 are mainly related to bug fixes and increased stability.
WSL provides a virtual machine with a full Linux kernel (based on the 6.6 branch) that can run Linux distributions. The kernel includes WSL-specific changes, such as optimizations to reduce startup time and memory consumption, the ability to return memory freed by Linux processes to Windows, and settings to exclude unnecessary drivers and subsystems. The system is installed in a separate disk image (VHD) with an ext4 file system and a virtual network adapter.
Source: opennet.ru
