Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) allows Linux binaries to run natively on Windows 10. That being said, one could run user-mode binaries such as Bash, Sed, Awk etc. WSL provides a Linux-compatible kernel interface that is developed by Microsoft and it runs binaries from Ubuntu 16.04. Work on the Windows Subsystem for Linux was announced in March 2016. Since then WSL was a beta tool available for testing & exploring Linux CLI tools from a Windows host.

On 28 July 2017 Microsoft announced that the Windows Subsystem for Linux is no longer in beta and becomes a fully supported feature of Windows 10. I suggest reading the annoucement by Rich Turner from Microsof) for further details.

Now, does that make me a Microsoft fan yet? Nope! I’d rather just thank Shelly for her continuous pestering to peek on the other side and see what the Microsoft folks have been doing. :-)

Image source: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com