The origins of WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) lies in Microsoft’s Project Astoria, a tool originally designed to port Android apps to Windows 10 Mobile. The project was killed in 2016 but the code formed the basis of WSL, which was released in beta later in the same year. Unlike third-party apps like Cygwin, WSL’s initial aim was native Linux compatibility through serving Unix programs as custom isolated ‘pico processes’.
In May 2019, Microsoft announced the release of WSL2, a huge improvement over its predecessor, given it uses virtualisation to run Linux kernels inside a lightweight virtual machine. This not only improves performance but adds full system call compatibility.
Both WSL2 and compatible Linux distros can easily be installed via the command line or Microsoft Store.
