Microsoft this week removed the “Preview” label formerly used by the Windows subsystem that allows applications originally built for Linux to run. With this, it has officially entered a stable state Windows Subsystem for Linux(WSL), which allows you to install any Linux on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
At the same time, Redmond creates some confusion with the issue, because WSL already had version 1, which was then replaced by version 2. At the same time, these figures did not refer to the degree of readiness or stability of the subsystem, as they do now, but they pointed to the implementation of the idea in two completely different ways.
WSL 1 tried to mimic the Linux environment with some sort of emulation with a kernel that only mimicked the original, but that was unsuccessful. In contrast, the completely revised WSL 2 already creates a machine-level virtualized environment for the open source system kernel, in which the near-original version or versions of Linux run.
This is the first stable release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux, i.e. WSL 2 version 1.0, which Microsoft recommends to everyone. By the way, users are free to choose which Linux distribution they prefer and will be able to install any current version of Ubuntu, Debian, Kali and OpenSUSE in Windows, even all of them.
With the help of the Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI, graphical Linux applications can also run alongside Windows programs on a common graphical interface, however, setting up accordingly still requires some practice.
