Microsoft has announced the release of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) version 2.6.0. This update is notable for being the first release in which the WSL command-line tools, background processes, and virtual machine services have been made available under the MIT open-source license. Previously, only the Linux kernel and the wslg graphics stack were open-sourced, while the associated utilities remained proprietary.
Advertisеment
The WSL software allows users to run native Linux applications directly on Windows , transparently for the user. Internally, WSL relies on a customized Linux kernel based on the 6.6 branch. This kernel edition includes optimizations made for performance on Windows. Specially, it offers faster startup times, reduced memory consumption, and improved memory management. The latter allows freed Linux memory to be reclaimed by the host Windows system. Additional enhancements allow users to disable unnecessary drivers and subsystems for further resource saving.
The Linux environment runs within a lightweight virtual machine, stored in a dedicated VHD disk image formatted with the ext4 file system. It supports a virtual network adapter for networking.
What's new in WSL 2.6.0
Microsoft has provided the following change log for this version.
- First open source release of WSL
- Various stability improvements
- Update localized strings
- Don't throw when unregistering a distro that has a BasePath that doesn't exist (solves #13004)
- Fix distribution download failing if the URL contains parameters
- Fix various issues with systemd user sessions (solves #13053)
- Fix wslsettings crash when invoked from wslservice
- Set MOVEFILE_WRITE_THROUGH when moving distribution VHD's (solves #13055)
- Discard BOM header when parsing the Windows 'hosts' file (solves #9642)
- Correctly report corrupted disks when mount() fails with EUCLEAN (solves #13074)
- Don't use a ? prefix when resolving the distribution location (solves #13064)
- Solve potential failure while downloading a distribution if LastError is non zero
While this release focuses primarily on bug fixes and stability improvements, it still comes with a "pre-release" tag. Microsoft may be about to include more fixes in the stable version.
You will find everything related to this update on GitHub.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
