Is it accurate to call this WSL3? WSL 2 was released in 2019, but WSL 2.0.0 was released in 2023 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/releases/tag/2.0.0
In WSL3 Performance is about 5-60% faster than WSL2 depending on the workloadmicrosoft
WSL
C++2016–2026
microsoft / WSL
WSL
Windows Subsystem for Linux
222Distinct people
260Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
34.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Windows Subsystem for Linux
GitHub
Where it is used
- Docker Desktop — Docker Desktop uses WSL 2 as its engine so docker commands run via the WSL 2 engine on Windows. This is a shipped integration enabled in product settings. Source
What people are saying
My main issue is the lack of support for serial (so, no USB support): https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/2195. Other that this I love Windows 10 + WSL2 as a dev environment.
dgellow used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- microsoft/wslg · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year260 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-04-18 14:55:26 UTC to 2026-10-10 10:32:09 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 23 | 4 | 19 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 33 | 2 | 31 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 1 | 12 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 23 | 0 | 23 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 40 | 4 | 36 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 37 | 3 | 34 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 18 | 3 | 15 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 27 | 4 | 23 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 22 | 5 | 17 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 5 | 6 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Welcome to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) repository
Learn more about WSL | Downloads & Release notes | Contributing to WSL
About
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a powerful way for you to run your Linux command-line tools, utilities and applications, all unmodified and directly on Windows without the overhead of a traditional virtual machine or dual boot setup.
You can install WSL right away by running this command inside of your Windows command line:
wsl --install
You can learn more about best practices for setup, overviews of WSL and more at our WSL documentation page.
Related repositories
WSL also has related open source repositories:
microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel - The Linux kernel shipped with WSL
microsoft/WSLg - Support for Linux GUI apps in WSL
microsoftdocs/wsl - WSL documentation at aka.ms/wsldocs
Contributing
This project welcomes contributions of all types, including coding features / bug fixes, documentation fixes, design proposals and more.
We ask that before you start working on a contribution, please read our Contributor's Guide.
For guidance on developing for WSL, please read the developer docs for instructions on how to build WSL from source and details on its architecture.
Code of Conduct
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct
Trademarks
This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft’s Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party’s policies.
Privacy and telemetry
The application logs basic diagnostic data (telemetry). For more information on privacy and what we collect, see our data and privacy documentation.
The software may collect information about you and your use of the software and send it to Microsoft. Microsoft may use this information to provide services and improve our products and services. You may turn off the telemetry as described in the repository. There are also some features in the software that may enable you and Microsoft to collect data from users of your applications. If you use these features, you must comply with applicable law, including providing appropriate notices to users of your applications together with a copy of Microsoft’s privacy statement. Our privacy statement is located at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=824704. You can learn more about data collection and use in the help documentation and our privacy statement. Your use of the software operates as your consent to these practices.
Note on localization
All key CLI texts in WSL are localized, but some detailed error outputs are not fully localized. Specifically in wslc.exe we make use of lower level open source libraries that do not have full localization. We've kept these unlocalized strings in the error output to provide richer failure context so that end users can more easily resolve issues.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
260 sourcesGreat job in benchmarking! I wasn't even aware of the WSLc (WSL3) release. For others, the release info is available here: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/releases/tag/3.0.1
EDIT: stumbled on the previous HN post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49970507
In WSL3 Performance is about 5-60% faster than WSL2 depending on the workloadMy first open source feature request
1 points · Open discussionI wouldn't try this yet. I ran into problems with silent failing automount, e.g., https://github.com/microsoft/wsl/issues/40773
In WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system accessThere have been massive GitHub issue spams recently, including in Microsoft's WSL repository.
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/40028
In Claude Code's source code has been leaked via a map file in their NPM registry- https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues
- https://github.com/isce-framework/isce2/issues
- https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/issues
- https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-node/issues
In WSL's GitHub repository is being hit with a wave of Chinese spam issuesWSL's GitHub repository is being hit with a wave of Chinese spam issues
9 points · Open discussionThe Windows filesystem isn't slow per se, it's a slowness caused by "a thousand cuts" type of problem.
https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...
In Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OSChinese localization Issue: command line arguments are translated
1 points · Open discussionYou need to enable sparse VHD! However it doesn't alwyas trigger. I have moderate success with enabling TRIM systemd service on the distro.
Here is the tracking issue:
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/12103
And if nothing works you can still manually optimize.
https://superuser.com/questions/1827953/reclaim-wsl2-disk-sp...
In Isn't WSL2 just a VM?I mean inside WSL. E.g. running nested virtual inside WSL env. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/11216#issuecomment-2... for details.
In Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS accountYou might be missing context here.
There is a feature of Windows called “Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)” already that basically does the inverse of this (windows host, Linux VM).
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL
The feature is a windows subsystem (for running Linux).
In WinBoat: Windows apps on Linux with seamless integrationShowing the 15 most recent of 260 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.