Microsoft open sources Windows Subsystem for Linux

In a move that will undoubtedly reshape the landscape for developers, Microsoft has announced that it is open-sourcing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). First launched in 2016, WSL has become a crucial tool for developers working across both Windows and Linux environments. Its new open-source status represents a significant shift in how developers interact with Windows and Linux side-by-side, marking a new chapter in the collaboration between these two operating systems.

Microsoft’s decision to open-source WSL is a major step forward in the company’s broader push toward embracing open-source technologies. Over the years, Microsoft has increasingly adopted open-source principles, contributing to major projects like Visual Studio Code, GitHub, and Azure, which are all pillars of today’s development ecosystem. By open-sourcing WSL, Microsoft takes this philosophy one step further, offering developers and system administrators an unprecedented level of control and transparency over the tool that enables a seamless experience between Windows and Linux environments.

WSL provides Linux environment to Windows developers to learn and work. Windows developers can execute Linux commands, run popular Linux applications, and even develop in native Linux environments without needing to dual-boot or rely on virtual machines. WSL is made of a set of distribution components. Some run in Windows, and some run inside the WSL 2 virtual machine.

For quite long time, Microsoft kept WSL as closed source, it will be always packaged along with Windows release. WSL usage and its community was growing and in 2021, Microsoft made a wise decision to make the code base separate from Windows. WSL can be upgraded irrespective of the Windows upgrade. This is infact a great move and this helped developers to work in cross-platform development. As businesses and developers increasingly need to work across multiple operating systems, tools like WSL make the process smoother.

Now Microsoft has made yet another milestone decision to make WSL open source and the source is available in Github. This will increase the transparency and community base. Microsoft continues to contribute to open source and they are one of the top organization contributing open source projects. As the tech industry continues to move toward multi-platform, cloud-native, this decision will certainly help developers to be more productive in mult-platform environments.