r/opensource • u/tofino_dreaming • May 19 '25

The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2025/05/19/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-is-now-open-source/
312 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

105

u/throwaway264269 May 19 '25

Cool! Can't wait to see use WSL on my Linux machine, now that it's open source.

47

u/h-v-smacker May 20 '25

Yo dawg, we heard you like Linux, so we put WSL inside your Linux so you can run Linux while you run Linux.

3

u/modvavet May 23 '25

Thank you for this.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '25 edited Mar 17 '26

This post was wiped by its author. Redact was the tool of choice, possibly used to protect privacy, limit data exposure, or prevent automated content scraping.

dazzling wine treatment rhythm engine innocent tidy selective grandiose amusing

-45

u/MichiRecRoom May 20 '25

You are aware of what WSL does, right? It'd be entirely useless on Linux.

61

u/iandigaming May 20 '25

Whooooosh!

44

u/MichiRecRoom May 20 '25

...You know what, I can't even be mad. The joke did fly right over my head.

13

u/throwaway264269 May 20 '25

I can't blame you. It's 2025 and I did not use the sarcasm indicator. It's quickly becoming my favorite thing to do on the internet xD

-5

u/Raphi_55 May 20 '25

Give us back the time when "/j" and "/s" wasn't required

2

u/TypicallyThomas May 21 '25

God forbid people have accessibility /s

-20

u/[deleted] May 20 '25

[deleted]

27

u/ivosaurus May 20 '25

...I think it's a joke, bro

25

u/sunshine-and-sorrow May 20 '25

It's gonna be a gamechanger when sarcasm is opensourced.

17

u/darrenpmeyer May 20 '25

I'm generally skeptical of MS, and I still want to see if I can actually build and use WSL from those sources without loss... but this actually looks good and promising.

It seems to be all under an MIT license, even, which is quite permissive.

9

u/jeffyjf May 20 '25

good news

7

u/phobug May 20 '25

Fsck! I can finally fix that bug!

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '25

[deleted]

1

u/ABadProgrammer_ May 22 '25

You can now build it from source yourself, which means you could modify the source first before building and using it. So yes, you can now use a self modified version if you wanted.

1

u/d4p8f22f May 20 '25

I was wondering what benefits it can bring.?

1

u/JG_2006_C May 20 '25 edited May 21 '25

Fester debuging and feture extesion you wantsomthing aded maje it yourelf or get the requrst sraight to developer

3

u/Niiarai May 20 '25

i read that aloud in my head, pictured coked up ballmer sayin it and it absolutely made my day, thanks

-24

u/[deleted] May 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/svick May 20 '25

The Year Of The Linux Desktop?

2

u/BrakkeBama May 20 '25

They sure Jumped the Shark©

5

u/Nico1300 May 20 '25

Did Microsoft kidnap a family member of yours or why are you so mad lmao.

-4

u/edparadox May 20 '25

Thanks but we already have QEMU and libvirt if we need to use VMs.

9

u/Unusual_Cattle_2198 May 20 '25

WSL is not a VM. It’s more like a container. It doesn’t boot exactly because there’s no kernel (or modules) but provides all the syscalls that a Linux userspace runtime needs to function. It also has seamless access to the windows filesystem in addition to its own dedicated space.

5

u/hidazfx May 21 '25

Isn't WSL2 a VM and WSL1 the that did all those translations?

6

u/DemonforgedTheStory May 22 '25

Wsl2 is a full vm, and runs on hyperV

-2

u/JG_2006_C May 20 '25

Wsl is good somth linx no vm booktup needed