Microsoft Releases WSL Containers for Windows 11

Microsoft announced today that WSL Containers are generally available in Windows 11 for developers.

“WSL is central to our commitment to making Windows the best place to build, run and manage Linux workloads,” Microsoft corporate vice president Logan Iyer says. “As AI, cloud-native development, containers, and open-source ecosystems continue to converge on Linux, more developers are choosing to perform these workloads directly on Windows devices. We’re continuing our journey towards this goal with a new feature in WSL: WSL containers, which is generally available today.”

WSL–the Windows Subsystem for Linux–debuted in 2016, offering developers and others with a way to host virtual Linux instances inside Windows and run Linux command line interface (CLI) apps. WSL 2.0 arrived in early 2020 with a completely redesigned and optimized architecture and, in time, the ability to run graphical Linux apps. In late 2025, Microsoft completely open source WSL 2.

Containers are a common technology for isolating software environments on a host computer, similar but lighter weight than traditional virtualization solutions. Microsoft announced it would add container support to WSL this past June at Build, and it released a public preview later that month. It includes a new CLI for WSL for building, running, and managing containers and a set of fully projected C++ and C#/WinRT APIs for Windows developers who need to run Linux containers in their apps.

You can learn more about WSL Containers on Microsoft Learn.