HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
microsoft
WSL
C++2016–2026
microsoft / WSL

WSL

Windows Subsystem for Linux

Systems & InfrastructureMobile & Desktop
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
222Distinct people
260Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
34.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:02:44 AM 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.

0102030402016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 4 submissions, 19 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 33 mentions; 2 submissions, 31 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 1 submissions, 12 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 0 submissions, 23 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 40 mentions; 4 submissions, 36 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 37 mentions; 3 submissions, 34 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 18 mentions; 3 submissions, 15 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 27 mentions; 4 submissions, 23 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 0 submissions, 13 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 22 mentions; 5 submissions, 17 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 5 submissions, 6 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* 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
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23419
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC33231
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13112
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23023
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC40436
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC37334
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC18315
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC27423
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC13013
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC22517
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1156

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 GitHub

What Hacker News says

13 sources
spatulon·Dec 7, 2018
Have you seen this comment from a Microsoft employee explaining why NTFS performance is so bad? It's pretty interesting and informative, but doesn't leave me with much hope that things will ever improve. https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425... I use Windows for development at work (semi-voluntarily - our Windows support was getting neglected because most developers choose to use run macOS or Linux), and I've been getting pretty fed up with how slow it is. And it's not just filesystem performance; process creation and terminal output are horrendously slow as well. The only redeeming thing about development on Windows is that Linux doesn't have any debuggers that are as good/usable as Visual Studio.
In From macOS to Windows and WSL
0x54D5·Dec 7, 2018
VSCode with WSL with Nginx & PHP 7.1 only has one issue currently. A bug with fastcgi buffering which I have documented here: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3687 Yes. It's a little bit slower but for development local environments it really does not matter. I actually set this up for the Windows devs at work but I still use a 2014 MBP. Our ionic app though is a huge pain in the ass that requires Visual Studio to setup a decent dev environment in native windows.
In From macOS to Windows and WSL
gecko·Jun 14, 2018
Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982. Well that stinks. I'd swear I hit this and it got resolved with the inotify-related patches, but clearly I misremembered. Might be thinking of uwsgi or something. Re. Hyper-V: yeah, I do a Samba mount. This in my experience actually performs a ton better than VirtualBox shared folders, but it's been a long time. I have no idea how it compares to VMware's implementation. (VMware and VirtualBox also have the ability to cleanly virtualize a graphics-accelerated Linux desktop, which is not something I need or care about, but might be a show-stopper for both WSL and Hyper-V if you do.)
In Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
abrookins·Jun 14, 2018
Actually, it was as recently as this very week! Running with all the latest updates on a new Surface Book 2, I ran into a variation of this open issue: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1982. That was only the last and final blocking issue I ran into, after a series of minor (or at least, not serious) problems that I powered through during too many late nights. Couple of things: - Hyper-V. Was excited for this and tried it, since I had already set up Docker for Windows and pointed the CLI tools in WSL at it. However, Hyper-V didn't appear to have any support for the "shared folder" concept that VMWare and VirtualBox do. Is your only option here to set up Windows share and use Samba? - I dislike running VMs generally, but would have gone that route if I could have gotten a setup I liked. However, after reconfiguring everything to use
Read the rest
VirtualBox (including Docker) and creating a single VM there to do Docker and Linux stuff on, it seemed to tax the machine too much (i5 8GB SB2). With a beefy machine that would have worked better, but Windows 10 isn't that appealing if I have to buy the highest-spec machines and run VMs... that's exactly where it was 5-10 years ago. I have a lot more to say about WSL and Windows 10, and it probably deserves a blog post. I haven't returned the Surface yet because I'm kinda in love with it, but also if I can't do all my work on it, then it's not something I need to own.
In Dell XPS 13 Review from a lifelong Mac user
raesene9·May 26, 2018
Depending on what you need, it already does. Docker for Windows provides Linux (and Windows) Containers on a windows host, albeit the Linux containers run in a VM. you can access docker for windows from WSL by setting up TLS on the Docker engine interface (https://raesene.github.io/blog/2018/03/29/WSL-And-Docker/) There's also some suggestions that some versions of the docker daemon can run on WSL with ubuntu https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/2291#issuecomment-38...
In Command Line and Windows Subsystem for Linux – The Windows 10 April Update

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.