The WSL Improvements In The Windows 10 October 2018 Update

While sadly there aren't any major I/O performance improvements to note for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with the recent Windows 10 October 2018 Update, there are a number of other new WSL features.

Tara Raj of Microsoft has got around to writing about all of the WSL improvements with this latest update to Windows 10. That recent WSL work includes adding the pay-for WLinux distribution to the Microsoft Store, openSUSE 15 / SLES 15 now being available for use on WSL, support for running Ubuntu 18.04 WSL on ARM devices running Windows 10, support for launching a Linux shell from the Windows File Explorer, support for installing WSL distributions from the command line, improved per-directory case sensitivity handling, copy/paste support for WSL consoles, and other improvements. It's with this update too that Notepad finally supports Unix line endings.

Those running Windows 10 and WSL can find out about these latest improvements via the Microsoft Command Line Blog.

Last month I already ran some fresh Windows 10 WSL benchmarks. The overall system/CPU performance remains quite good but the glaring bottleneck remains with much slower I/O performance. Microsoft has said they are working to improve the WSL I/O performance, but there's nothing to report for the 2018 updates.