A real Linux kernel and userland running alongside Windows - architecture, integration, and daily use.
The specific interop layer that lets a WSL shell launch Windows executables and Windows shells launch Linux commands, translating paths and streams both ways.
WSL2 runs Microsoft's own open-source Linux kernel fork, patched for its virtualized environment and updated independently of any distro's kernel package.
Microsoft shelved its Android-app bridge for Windows 10 Mobile in February 2016, consolidating on a single iOS-focused bridge just weeks before WSL's own reveal.
Eighteen months after its reveal, WSL gained full Microsoft support, multi-distro Store installs, and Windows Server compatibility, ending its beta status.
Microsoft's Build 2020 GPU compute announcement, followed by NVIDIA's CUDA preview, let machine learning frameworks use a physical GPU from inside WSL2.
The wsl --install command, shipped via KB5004296 in mid-2021, collapsed WSL's previously multi-step manual setup process into a single line.
WSL dropped its Preview label in the Microsoft Store on November 22, 2022, decoupling its update cycle from Windows and letting improvements ship independently.
Microsoft and Canonical's September 2022 announcement closed one of WSL's longest-standing gaps: software expecting systemd as PID 1 finally worked.
Windows 11's October 5, 2021 launch made Linux compatibility via WSL2 part of the platform's core story, not an optional add-on developers had to seek out.
At Build 2019, Microsoft revealed WSL2, an entirely different architecture running a genuine Linux kernel inside a purpose-built lightweight virtual machine.