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Microsoft Unveils WSL 3 and WSL Containers for Windows
At Build 2026, Microsoft unveiled a preview of the next version of Windows Subsystem for Linux, namely WSL 3. With a redesigned Linux-on-Windows execution architecture, Microsoft aims to provide near-native access to GPUs and NPUs. At the same time, WSL containers were announced from San Francisco.
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A paravirtualized architecture for WSL 3
The move from WSL 1 to WSL 2 was marked by the use of a real Linux kernel inside a lightweight Hyper-V virtual machine. With WSL 3, Microsoft wants to go even further, and above all, the Redmond company wants to meet the technical requirements for local AI.
Microsoft once again wants to modernize the integration of Linux on Windows by relying this time on a paravirtualized interface. The goal is to improve performance when accessing the machine's GPU or NPU. In fact, this new architecture makes it possible to remove the virtualization bottleneck associated with hardware access when using WSL 2.
Communication between Linux tools installed in WSL and the hardware present on Windows will be better, which should benefit an entire ecosystem of tools:
- PyTorch, JAX and vLLM ;
- llama.cpp and Ollama ;
- ONNX Runtime, CUDA, ROCm, DirectML and OpenVINO.
Microsoft wants to make sure this works properly, and this architectural change seems to be the answer to that challenge.
How can you take advantage of WSL 3?
A preview of WSL 3 will be available only on certain machines, including Copilot+ PCs (thanks to the presence of an NPU) and those equipped with the following platforms: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, Intel Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake. Support for AMD will come later.
After that, Microsoft plans to distribute WSL 3 directly through Windows Update. For now, there is little information on this topic and Build 2026 is now over. The Redmond company should share more in the coming days or weeks.
WSL containers and wslc.exe
In San Francisco, Microsoft also unveiled a new feature directly related to WSL: WSL containers. This is a solution integrated into WSL to create, run, and interact with Linux containers using an API and the command line through a tool called wslc.exe.
"This means Linux containers will now run directly on Windows, with no additional configuration required.", Microsoft says, referring to an out-of-box experience.
A preview of WSL containers is expected in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here is a short video shared by Microsoft.
