(
Windows
Subsystem for
Linux) A software layer from Microsoft for executing Linux applications in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. WSL provides integration between Windows and Linux. Introduced in 2016, WSL 1 requires a Linux version such as Ubuntu or openSUSE. In 2019, WSL 2 is a major change of WSL that includes a Microsoft-created Linux kernel and a virtual machine environment. WSL 2 enables Linux I/O to run considerably faster than WSL 1, and WSL 2 supports ELF64 binaries to run.
WSL provides interoperability between both platforms. Environment variables can be shared between, and Windows commands can be executed in Linux, while Linux commands can be executed in Windows. See
Linux and
ELF.