Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) is here

WSL2 will officially be part of Windows 10, version 2004, which will be rolled out very soon. The design of WSL 2 is quite different to WSL 1. It includes a real Linux kernel, not just a compatibility layer, which means you can run Docker. Here is a quick look at WSL 2 and a quick demo on Ubuntu running inside of Ubuntu running inside Windows!




#garyexplains

[ShaunMcCready]

Great explanation!! I was having issues with someone elses install video and yours filled in all the problem areas I had. Luckily I did the docker desktop for windows install instead of your script. Only after the fact did I see the pinned comment stating this. Thanks a ton!!!

[TLAngus]

wow the twist at the end really surprised me!

[dustinkrejci]

That computer hardware reveal got me to emotionally go, “ 😳 😯 woah”

[wisteela]

Excellent. Now I know what I'm getting in what I'm currently upgrading to. :)

[glebkoshelev]

In Microsoft presentation of WSL2 they showed a different conceptual image of how the whole thing is structured. According to their presentation both linux and windows kernels work on top of hypervisor and not like in your picture where linux runs on top of windows kernel. I might got that wrong, but as far as I understood linux in wsl2 is a normal linux except that resources are dynamically allocated by hypervisor the same way they do it on the cloud and there is a communication bridge in application layer between windows and linux.

[ZerqTM]

they should have named the conversion layer "eniw" since its kind like wine in reverse

[mercedesquintanilla]

Thank you very much! Your explanation was very helpful to me. I did manage to install WSL2 in an intel machine with the command wsl set default version 2 on PowerShell. I did not have the first version. It seemed that everything was going well but when I tried to start Ubuntu I got the same error message. In my case I did have to enable the virtualization in the BIOS and then uninstall and reinstall Ubuntu and that solved the problem.

[wlgrd]

How about accessing hardware connected to USB ports? Can I connect to a UART/CDC device?

[bid]

yes, i got some of the troubles you mentioned when upgrading to WSL2 on an AMD Ryzen. I had to go into the BIOS and enable Virtualization, among other things, but it's working fine now.
Good video and really interesting to hear about the Surface Pro X havng an ARM! (man, don't i love all the wordplay you can get out of tech...)

[randallanderson]

If, when you try to do the 'wsl -l -v' command, and you get an usage screen - it means that your version of Windows does not support wsl2 - yet.
I had tried to use windows insider slow track - but it still would not do wsl -v... I had to upgrade to Windows insider Fast track to get the latest version of Windows. Now when I do wsl -l -v I get a listing of my Ubuntu and it's version 1.

[ThomasWSmith-wmxn]

I want to like wsl2 but I keep running into issues when I try to actually work with it.

In the case that I have mysql installed via ubuntu wsl2.

But want to use workbench to interact with my mysql db. Could I have the server running through ubuntu and workbench working with the dbs through windows?

Same with mongodb and 3T.

[stddyman]

I had noticed the Arm64 message in the docker hello-world and wondered why that was :)

[carlosbornes]

After making the upgrade from WSL to WSL2 I'm getting some trouble running GUI. Before I was using X-ming and export Display:0 now this does not work. How had the same problem? How did you solve it?

[TheVerrm]

Guys a serious question - if this is basicaly a VM running underneath is it being reset with each opening or Windows reboot? Also is there any other interface between VM and windows other than shared network and storage access?

[Gabriel-klbt]

I love Microsoft is doing it. Now, it all comes down to a matter of preference of what system to use. If one is a gamer and a programmer, using WSL is just more convenient.

[john-r-edge]

Gary. Interesting stuff for sure. One question. Could you describe the pros and cons of this WSL-2 setup over using a traditional Type-2 hypervisor like Virtualbox (beyond the obvious fact that Vbox can so a Linux guest with desktop GUI) . Thanks.

[sandys]

this was very helpful - but you missed a critical step "sudo service docker start". without this, the docker run command does not work

[FinlayDaGk]

As a heavy user of Docker, I'm happy to see this being worked on :)
One thing I have on my mind though... how does it work with volumes?

[debojitmandal]

Hey Gary I have a question and this question is a bit out of this topic . Will there be a ecosystem between android and windows in future I mean a fully fledged where I can transfer files bw them.right now we can only trasfer photos from your phone app but only limited to 25 photo's.

[hwntwww]

how do you start Exlorer with a lower case initial e? I have to use upper case E