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Windows Subsystem for Linux Is Beta No More
With the fall release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, developers will be able to get full support for WSL, now that it's no longer labeled a beta service.
- By Michael Domingo
- 07/28/2017
With the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in a few months (it's expected in sometime this fall), developers will be able to get full support for the Windows Subsystem for Linux now that it's no longer labeled a beta service.
In fact, even thought Microsoft's coders are still polishing up Win10FCU code, WSL is already out of beta, according to a blog post from the WSL team. "Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will no longer be a beta feature and will become a fully supported Windows feature," writes Rich Turner, a WSL program manager, in a blog. "Early adopters on the Windows Insider program will notice that WSL is no longer marked as a beta feature as of Insider build 16251."
Windows Subsystem for Linux, also known as Bash on Ubuntu for Windows, enables developers to run a Bash shell natively in a Windows environment rather than under a virtual machine, which developers can then use to run Linux command-line tools, shell scripts, and apps. The capability has been available in Windows 10 since 2016, but it has been an experimental feature and came with no support. Even so, a number of tools and extensions for deploying Bash on Windows have been developed, many of them featured in this Visual Studio Magazine article from columnist Terrence Dorsey.
Turner notes that now that WSL is no longer in beta, developers working with it "gain the added advantage of being able to file issues on WSL and its Windows tooling via our normal support mechanisms if you want/need to follow a more formal issue resolution process." He also said that developers who are working with it who are part of the Insider program can immediately offer feedback through the Windows 10 Feedback Hub.
Turner in his blog is keen to emphasizes WSL's capabilities, noting that it's "NOT for running production workloads on Apache/nginx/MySQL/MongoDB/etc.," but more suited to be able to run Linux command-line tools that can be used in a development environment, as well as invoke Windows processes from Linux and vice versa. He notes that files on a Windows filesystem can be shared and accessed from within Linux, but there is currently no way to access Linux files from Windows. "We're working to improve this scenario in time," he added.
About the Author
Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. For 1105 Media, he managed MCPmag.com, Virtualization Review, and was Editor in Chief of Visual Studio Magazine and host of The .NET Insight Podcast until 2017. Contact him via his photography Web site at http://domingophoto.com.