Windows Subsystem For Linux Arrives In Windows 11 Store

The WSL page in the Win 11 store
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now much easier to install on Windows 11 thanks to its recent inclusion in the Microsoft Store, as announced on the Microsoft blog. It’s also on the Windows 10 store, for those of you holding out against the upgrade steamroller, though oddly this isn’t mentioned in the blog post.

Previously, WSL had to be installed as an optional Windows component, but now it’s treated just like any other app. The version of the subsystem that’s installed is described as a ‘preview’, but its screenshots show Kali, Debian, OpenSuse and Ubuntu distributions all running at the same time, also with GUI applications.

Treating WSL as an app will allow it to get updates independently of Windows Update, so they’re likely to come faster, but Microsoft will continue supporting the older version for some time too. The kernel used in the new version is 5.10.60.1.

It’s also the first production build with WSLg support - that’s graphics and sound. Though this was allowed in the Windows 10 version, it required starting a companion system distro that ran alongside your work, providing an X server and everything else that was missing from the Microsoft one. Now, this will no longer be necessary, leading to better performance and lower resource use. Linux binaries will also be able to access the host system’s GPU for AI and machine learning development, and Linux file system-formatted drives will be available directly inside WSL.

Ian Evenden
Freelance News Writer

Ian Evenden is a UK-based news writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He’ll write about anything, but stories about Raspberry Pi and DIY robots seem to find their way to him.

  • korekan
    Last time i check wsl can run almost anything i need, i dont really know what is the use case of it. I thought i can run linux services on this but i was wrong. But maybe this new wsl is better
    Reply
  • korekan said:
    Last time i check wsl can run almost anything i need, i dont really know what is the use case of it. I thought i can run linux services on this but i was wrong. But maybe this new wsl is better
    It's not a new WSL. It's the same WSL as before, except you can now update it independently from Windows.
    Reply