Microsoft introduced the release of the WSL 3.0 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) toolkit, which allows you to run Linux applications on Windows. The new branch is notable for the implementation of the ability to run Linux containers on Windows and the transition to using the Linux 6.18 kernel. The code used in WSL for command line utilities, background processes for Linux environments, services for running containers and a virtual machine, as well as the graphics stack wslg is open under the MIT license. Changes for the Linux kernel are provided under the GPLv2 license.
WSL provides a virtual machine with a full Linux kernel (based on the 6.18 branch), which can run Linux distributions. The kernel includes WSL-specific changes, such as optimizations to reduce startup time and memory consumption, the ability for Windows to reclaim memory freed by Linux processes, and settings to eliminate unnecessary drivers and subsystems. The system is installed in a separate disk image (VHD) with the ext4 file system and a virtual network adapter.
The new branch includes tools for creating, deploying and running Linux containers on Windows, including the wslc command line interface (WSL Containers) and the accompanying API. Key features of wslc:
- Operations for managing the lifecycle of containers, such as creating, starting, stopping, exporting, cleaning, and inspecting.
- Limiting the CPU and memory consumption of individual containers.
- Building, loading, sending, importing, saving and checking system images. Commands for viewing lists of available images. Batch operations with several images at once. Ability to package multiple images into one tar archive.
- Creation and management of virtual networks. Connecting containers to multiple networks. Creating your own network types. Network port forwarding.
- Creating, viewing and deleting partitions. Working with virtual disks (VHD).