Microsoft will release Linux 'genuine' Linux kernel with Windows 10 WSL

Microsoft will start "shipping" a built and customized Linux kernel (Linux kernel), first applied to Windows 10 Insider builds this summer. It is known that this kernel will serve as a backbone of Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.0 or WSL2.

Unlike WSL1, which uses only Linux-compatible kernels, WSL2 will use genuine, open source kernels, compiled from version 4.19 (stable release) of Linux at Kernel.org.

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Although the Linux kernel was released, Microsoft said it would not provide any Linux binary (linux binary). Instead, users will still need to download the Linux distribution they want to use from Microsoft Store, or by creating a custom distribution package.

Besides, Microsoft also announced that they will apply custom patches to reduce the kernel's memory capacity and provide more optimized hardware compatibility:

'Apart from LTS sources from Kernel.org, some local patches are also being applied. These patches will essentially have the binary output adjustment task to use in WSL2 by improving the launch time, reducing memory capacity and managing a minimum set of supported devices. . The result is the creation of a small, lightweight kernel, specifically built for WSL2 to replace the simulation architecture featured in the design of WSL1 ".

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Enhance performance with WSL2

In the first iteration of the Windows Subsystem for Linux system (WSL1), Microsoft had to compile the Linux system call so that they could communicate and work with the Windows NT kernel. With the actual use of the Linux kernel, the system call translation process will no longer be needed and the application will have full access to its own normal system calls.

Removing such translation not only improves compatibility for Linux applications, but also significantly improves the performance of the file system.

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According to the results of the tests conducted by Microsoft itself, the new Linux kernel has significantly improved the performance of WSL. In particular, the process of extracting archives is up to 20 times faster and tools like npm, git and cmake are 2 to 5 times faster:

"File-intensive tasks such as git clone, npm installation, apt updates, apt upgrades and more will be significantly faster. However, the actual speed will still depend. Much to the application you run, as well as the application that interacts with the file system, the initial tests we made for the results were relatively satisfactory, with WSL 2 running 20 times faster than WSL 1 when extracting compressed tarball and about 2-5 times faster when using git clone, installing npm and cmake on many different projects, we look forward to receiving feedback on the improvement speed from the plus side. when the product is officially released! ".

You can refer to a short video about WSL2 and its performance in Windows 10 below:

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To make WSL2 administration easier, Microsoft will also include the Linux kernel on Windows Update so that security updates and improvements will automatically be sent to Windows 10 for users.

For those who want to contribute to the WSL2 core, Microsoft will also turn it into open source and will store it as a project on GitHub. Besides, the company will also provide some guidelines to help developers build up their own custom cores.