It was first made available in Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14316. The technology behind Windows Subsystem for Linux originated in the unreleased Project Astoria, which enabled some Android applications to run on Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft's first foray into achieving Unix-like compatibility on Windows began with the Microsoft POSIX Subsystem, superseded by Windows Services for UNIX via MKS/ Interix, which was eventually deprecated with the release of Windows 8.1. It can be installed either by joining the Windows Insider program or manual install. WSL is not available to all Windows 10 users by default. Since June 2019, WSL 2 is available to Windows 10 customers through the Windows Insider program, including the Home edition. As a result, WSL 2 is compatible with more Linux binaries than WSL 1, as not all syscalls were implemented in WSL 1. WSL 2 differs from WSL 1 in that WSL 2 runs inside a managed virtual machine that implements the full Linux kernel.

In May 2019, WSL 2 was announced, introducing important changes such as a real Linux kernel, through a subset of Hyper-V features. It is available on Windows 10, Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC, Windows 11, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022. WSL 1 was first released on August 2, 2016, and acts as a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) by implementing Linux system calls on the Windows kernel. There are two versions of WSL: WSL 1 and WSL 2. Windows Subsystem for Linux ( WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows developers to run a Linux environment without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting. Linux kernel: GNU GPLv2 (only) with some code under compatible GPL variants or under permissive licenses like BSD, MIT Subsystem: Proprietary commercial software

Windows 10, Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows 11, Windows Server 2022

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