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Real, dated releases and announcements — verified against official sources, not speculation.
WSL dropped its 'Preview' label in the Microsoft Store on November 22, 2022, decoupling its update cycle from Windows itself entirely — meaning WSL improvements could ship on their own schedule going forward.
For years, software expecting systemd to be running as PID 1 simply didn't work correctly inside WSL. That changed in September 2022, closing one of WSL's longest-standing compatibility gaps.
When Windows 11 shipped on October 5, 2021, Linux compatibility via WSL2 was no longer an optional add-on developers had to know to seek out — it was part of the platform's story from day one.
For years, setting up WSL meant enabling Windows features manually, downloading a kernel update package separately, and installing a distro as separate steps. The wsl --install command collapsed all of it into one line.
Announced at Build 2020 and released to Windows Insiders the following spring, WSLg let a Linux graphical application's window appear on the Windows desktop like any native app — no separate remote desktop session required.
Microsoft announced GPU-accelerated compute support for WSL2 at Build 2020, followed by an NVIDIA CUDA preview that let machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow use a physical GPU from inside WSL2.
At Build 2019, Microsoft revealed WSL2 — not an incremental update, but an entirely different architecture running a genuine Linux kernel inside a purpose-built lightweight virtual machine.
Eighteen months after its first public reveal, WSL stopped being an experimental preview feature — gaining full Microsoft support, multi-distro installs via the Microsoft Store, and Windows Server compatibility.
Before WSL let Windows run real Linux binaries, Microsoft was building a bridge to run Android apps on Windows 10 Mobile instead. That project was shelved in February 2016 — clearing the way for what came next.
Through 1983, US video game console and cartridge sales began an unprecedented decline that would erase roughly 97% of the market's value within two years, taking Atari's fortunes down with it.