Microsoft Confirms WSL To Co-Exist With WSL2, Other Windows Subsystem for Linux Details

Now that Microsoft's Build conference is over where last week they announced Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL), they have now posted a FAQ to address other common questions about this new implementation for running Linux binaries on Windows 10.

Today's answers to the frequently asked questions comes after an interesting and technical video about WSL2 from their Build conference, so check that out first if you have not already and want to learn about the WSL2 architecture.

The information shared by Microsoft today basically comes down to:

- WSL2 will be supported on all SKUs where WSL is currently supported, including Windows 10 home, even though it does use the Hyper-V architecture.

- WSL1 will not be deprecated at this point and will co-exist side-by-side with WSL2 distributions.

- Due to the Hyper-V usage of WSL2, WSL2 will not work when VirtualBox or VMware software is active.

- The initial release of WSL2 provides limited hardware access, but they will be working on support for GPUs, serial, USB, etc, with time.

- In addition to running faster, WSL2 should work out better for networking applications.

More details on the Microsoft Dev Blog.