WSL gains support for Linux containers

Microsoft is broadening what the Windows Subsystem for Linux is for. Where the subsystem was once mainly a way to run Linux distributions, its WSL Containers feature has now reached general availability. You can pick it up by running wsl --update.

New tooling

Once installed, the feature adds a command-line tool called wslc.exe for building, running and deploying Linux containers on Windows. To keep things familiar, Microsoft ships an alias, container.exe, that accepts the usual container commands.

There is also a WSL Containers API that lets native Windows apps launch and interact with Linux containers programmatically. Microsoft points to scenarios such as running local AI workloads or using cloud-based containerized applications on the local machine.

The final release restores several capabilities that were absent during the preview: restarting containers, copying files in and out, health checks, network connect and disconnect commands, real-time container events, mount support, and configurable storage locations.

Aimed at businesses too

WSL Containers integrates with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, so security teams can observe process, file and network activity inside containers and tie it back to the Windows host. Through Microsoft Intune, administrators can disable the feature outright or restrict developers to images from approved registries — allow lists that help ensure pulled images meet the organization's security and compliance requirements.

The broader developer ecosystem is on board as well. VS Code Dev Containers can use wslc as their default driver, while Aspire and the VS Code Containers extension now support WSL Containers.

What comes next

The most requested missing piece is Docker Compose-style support. Microsoft says it has started work on it, aiming for wsl compose up to run existing compose.yaml files unchanged.

The company is also improving WSL's underlying networking and cross-OS file performance. It claims WSL Containers already delivers up to twice the speed when accessing Windows files from Linux environments.

Source: Bleeping Computer