After announcing WSL 2 last week, we have had an amazing response from the community and received many great questions about the details surrounding this new architecture. We love answering your questions and want to make sure these answers reach as many WSL users as possible. In this Q&A styled post we’ve gathered some of the most frequently asked questions, and our responses.
Does WSL 2 use Hyper-V? Will it be available on Windows 10 Home?
WSL 2 will be available on all SKUs where WSL is currently available, including Windows 10 Home.
The newest version of WSL uses Hyper-V architecture to enable its virtualization. This architecture will be available in an optional component that is a subset of the Hyper-V feature. This optional component will be available on all SKUs. You can expect to see more details about this experience soon as we get closer to the WSL 2 release.
What will happen to WSL 1? Will it be abandoned?
We currently have no plans to deprecate WSL 1. You can run WSL 1 and WSL 2 distros side by side, and can upgrade and downgrade any distro at any time. Adding WSL 2 as a new architecture presents a better platform for the WSL team to deliver features that make WSL an amazing way to run a Linux environment in Windows.
Will I be able to run WSL 2 and other 3rd party virtualization tools such as VMware, or Virtual Box?
Some 3rd party applications cannot work when Hyper-V is in use, which means they will not be able to run when WSL 2 is enabled. Unfortunately, this does include VMware, and versions of Virtual Box before Virtual Box 6 (Virtual Box 6.0.0 released in December 2018 now supports Hyper-V as a fallback execution core on a Windows host!)
We are investigating ways to help resolve this issue. For example, we expose a set of APIs called Hypervisor Platform that third-party virtualization providers can use to make their software compatible with Hyper-V’s. This lets applications use the Hyper-V architecture for their emulation such as the Google Android Emulator, and Virtual Box 6 and above which are both now compatible with Hyper-V.
Can I access the GPU in WSL 2? Are there plans to increase hardware support?
In initial releases of WSL 2 hardware access support will be limited, e.g: you will be unable to access the GPU, serial or USBs . However, adding better device support is high on our backlog, as this opens many more use cases for developers that wish to interact with these devices. In the meantime, you can always use WSL 1 which has serial port and USB access. Please stay tuned to this blog and WSL team members on Twitter to stay informed about the latest features coming to insider builds and reach out to give us feedback on what devices you’d like to interact with!
Will WSL 2 be able to use networking applications?
Yes, in general networking applications will be faster and work better since we have full system call compatibility. However, the new architecture uses virtualized networking components. This means that in initial preview builds WSL 2 will behave more similarly to a virtual machine, e.g: WSL 2 will have a different IP address than the host machine. We are committed to making WSL 2 feel the same as WSL 1, and that includes improving our networking story. We expect to add improvements as quickly as we are able to, such as accessing all networking apps from Linux or Windows using localhost. We will be posting more details about our networking story and improvements as we approach the release of WSL 2.
If you have further questions about WSL, or simply want to reach out to the team you can find us on Twitter!
WSL Team members on twitter:
- Taylor Brown @Taylorb_msft
- Yosef Durr @yosefdurr
- Sven Groot @svengroot_ms
- Ben Hillis @benhillis
- Craig Loewen @craigaloewen
- Sunil Muthuswamy @SunilMut
- Brian Perkins
- Palkesh Soni @sonipalkesh
- John Starks @gigastarks
- Craig Wilhite @CraigWilhite
Is it possible to deploy cuda10 on Wsl2? If yes, then how? if no then when?
Ok, so far I gather it's a no to my Infnoise TRNG and also OpenCL/Cuda. For the Python setups I was looking at that are built on Virtualbox, it's a maybe (I have 6.0.8 and I keep getting an error when trying to start a V-Box right now... I'll keep trying). Is there any indication of a deployment date yet? (I'd do the Insider thing except this is my main delevopment/QA/Bughunter PC and I can't...
I want to know about the optional component that is a subset of the Hyper-V feature
is this work as vmware or other vms(only open when I use wsl2 and hyper-v disapper when I close wsl2) . I use wsl1 because I don’t want my win10 turn to a guest os of hyper-v Hypervisor
if “WSL2” working as a hyper-v vm like my computer control by hyper-v Hypervisor
why I just start a linux vm in hyper-v?
what’s the different with WSL2 and hyper-v vm ,thank you
I think I know the answer to this already….
Can I run Windows 10 with WSL 2 as a guest in a virtual machine? I would expect no, as that would seem to nest VM monitors/hypervisors.
Will it still be possible to pipe input andoutput between winows and linux processes in wsl2 or will i want to stay with wsl1 for that
How about ext4, ext3, and ext2 filesystem?
Are it supported on WSL 2?
I encourage everyone to view the recording of the “The new Windows subsystem for Linux architecture: a deep dive” //Build 2019 session BRK3068
Will there be a way to choose a different install location for WSL 2 and it’s programs?
For example, my computer doesn’t have a lot of space on it’s main drive so I’d like to keep WSL 2 and all of it’s stuff on a separate hard drive so it doesn’t interfere with my normal usage of my computer.
Any chance that the SLAT/EPT requirement could be lifted for the Hyper-V subset you rely on, so it would work on older CPUs without SLAT?
It is good to know that WSL 1 is not considered deprecated (though I wish you had chosen a different name for “WSL 2”); but does this mean that you will keep extending the syscall coverage of WSL 1, or is WSL 1 considered “done”?