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At the Microsoft Developer Conference, Redmond today announced major changes to the Windows subsystem for Linux, as well as Windows 10 command line enhancements with the Windows terminal. Both are developing the already robust methods of development on Windows and offer fantastic features and additions.
The Windows for Linux subsystem has evolved considerably since it was introduced as a Bash shell in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update in 2016. The Windows for Linux subsystem, or WSL, offered support Linux by translating Linux system calls into Windows APIs run by Windows itself, and this feature allowed Linux developers to install a distribution of their choice and access its command line side-by-side with Windows.
While the translation layer has added compatibility and ease of use, performance is an area in which it could stumble. So, for the second iteration of WSL by Microsoft, Microsoft adds a custom Linux kernel to Windows itself to handle Linux APIs. To do this, it uses virtualization, with Linux running on a lightweight Hyper-V virtual machine tightly integrated with Windows, which allows full compatibility of system calls because the Linux kernel will respond to requests rather than to them. to receive. translated.
Although it is a virtual machine, there will be no resources to configure and launching a shell will only take a few seconds to be up and running. It will still be possible to access the Windows file system to retrieve and modify files, just like WSL v1, but also to run most Linux software, such as X-Server, Docker, etc., directly on Windows. As a virtual machine, it will have its own network adapter, although it is configured by default to be shared with the physical network adapter of the host PC at the moment, although this can be modified before the official release of WSL v2.
The Linux kernel itself will be a custom build for Windows based on 4.19, which is the current long-term stable branch, and kernel updates will be handled by Windows Update. No user involvement is needed to keep the Linux system up-to-date. to date by the end user.
In addition to increased compatibility, the new virtualized Linux kernel brings significant performance increases for tasks requiring a lot of system calls. Microsoft has achieved 20 times better performance with WSL v2 compared to v1 when decompressing a compressed compressed file, and twice as fast. 5 best performances using git clone and other projects. In addition, you can still access and edit files using Windows utilities, and Microsoft has added support for different end-of-line characters for Linux and Windows in applications such as Notepad.
If you are using Windows Subsystem for Linux, these changes should be good news. There will likely be some difficulties during the transition, but Microsoft will release this information in June to the Windows Insider program for comments. This program did not have the reputation of finding bugs before its release in the past, but it will allow users to get some time with the changes before moving on to production. Microsoft has not officially announced which version it will be, but this could be done this fall, depending on the progress of the team and how the feedback will be done.
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