Linux GUI app support on Windows 10 Subsystem

Windows 10 users running insider got some threat from Microsoft this week which provides GPU support and new command line options for the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

At the 2020 conference, Microsoft announced that they are going to add CUDA and DirectML GPU computing support so that artificial intelligence and device learning applications could be used in WSL.

In Windows 10 Insider build 20150, Microsoft is now previewing these features and programs like TensorFlow which can be used with your GPU in WSL.

Further, Microsoft explained that, “This update will include support for NVIDIA CUDA, which will help enable professionals to use their local Windows machines for inner-loop development and experimentation. Additionally, this will also support DirectML, which will empower students and beginners to use hardware accelerated training on the breadth of Windows hardware, across AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs,”

Regrettably, this feature is not ready but Microsoft WSL program manager Craig Loewenhas started to ask user for recommendations of Linux apps that they want to see working in WSL.

Getting some command line love

While releasing this preview, Microsoft has also added more support for using WSL from the command line. For those users who don’t have installed WSL into their system, Microsoft added a new wsl.exe –install command that will automatically install the Virtual Machine Platform component and also Windows Subsystem for Linux. Once done, it will prompt you to restart Windows to finish the installation process.

Furthermore, last week we reported that Microsoft had start to test updating the WSL2 Linux Kernel through Windows update. Once release, you can now check for new updates and install them from the command line by using wsl.exe  –update command. Apart from this, there are still several changes done to make WSL Linux distributions as fully featured as their native counterparts. It should be excitement for users that what changes come next for WSL.