Windows Subsystem for Linux

When Microsoft announced they were adding Bash support to Windows, they picked the right place to do it. It was announced at their Build developer conference last year, and it got a lot of applause. It was arguably one of the biggest additions to the Anniversary Update, and it wasn’t just the Bash shell either. Bash runs on Ubuntu which is running as a subsystem of Windows, allowing many Linux commands to work out of the box with no virtual machine necessary.

In the time since this was released last summer, Microsoft has been hard at work adding more features here. One of the biggest changes is they have moved from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04. It must be noted that it is not automatically updated, but will have the new version for new installs. You can try to upgrade it in-place, but the recommended method is to remove the WSL and re-add it.

Bash in the Powershell console

They have also added more support for developer tools (source):

  • Core tools: apt, sed, grep, awk, top, tmux, ssh, scp, etc.
  • Shells: Bash, zsh, fish, etc.
  • Dev tools: vim, emacs, nano, git, gdb, etc.
  • Languages & platforms: Node.js & npm, Ruby & Gems, Java & Maven, Python & Pip, C/C++, C# & .NET Core & Nuget, Go, Rust, Haskell, Elixir/Erlang, etc.
  • Systems & Services: sshd, Apache, lighttpd, nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL
  • And many others

INOTIFY

They have also added support for mapped network drives, mounting Windows drives, and quite a bit more. There is now support for file change notification support, network connection enumeration, and more. The amount of new features in the Linux Subsystem is fairly impressive, and Microsoft’s other departments could learn from these devs, who keep a detailed change log of everything they have added, and you can find it here:

Windows Subsystem for Linux Release Notes

High DPI Changes What’s still missing, and other changes
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  • MattMe - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    Are you by any chance running an install of 10 that was upgraded from an earlier version? Several test machines at work, and alll my home machines struggled after an upgrade, I hated it the first few weeks. The I did a fresh install on them and it fixed 99% of all issues I had on every device. Just a thought :)
  • fm13 - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    I tried upgrading from 8.1 Pro but gave up and just installed Win 10 on a formatted drive. So this is a "clean" install I'm talking about.
  • Instyle - Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - link

    An issue I've ran into is that the update files that got downloaded were in some corrupted state. So instead of checking for updates, Windows Update would try to use them and fail. The solution I've found is to delete C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution. This is where update files get downloaded to (including new updates like the Creators Update, culmulative updates and security updates) before being applied. Normally you can't just rename/delete it as there is typically some update process running in it. You have to kill any process running in it by opening Task Manager > Performance > Open Resource Monitor > CPU > Associated Handles and enter the folder path into the Search box. It'll pull up a list of processes open in that folder, end each of them. Next go to the folder and either rename (if you're wary) or delete it. Then check for updates. Hope this helps!
  • lord_anselhelm - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    Don't know if this will help, but you might want to try the Windows Update Troubleshooter. I had a problem on my laptop where a couple of files had been corrupted and I was unable to update Windows. The troubleshooter fixed it. Also, consider using Windows Update MiniTool: it's so much nicer than the default updater.
  • faizoff - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    This update was surprisingly the smoothest update process for me. Too much stuff configured currently for me to do a clean install, the update itself went about without any consequence. No programs have been affected that I could see. The upgrade process has been getting better and better. Though there is still some issue with my wifi adapter when using the latest drivers provided by the mfg. wifi only works well with a particular version of the driver.

    I like the Edge enhancements, don't use game mode so don't care about it. paint 3D is fun and I'd never thought I'd actually prefer the previous iteration of the start menu with all apps tagged along with the pinned tiles. Really warming up to it now.

    One issue still prevails that's been there from the start, explorer.exe crashes randomly and restarts, still cannot for the life of me figure that one out.
  • blahsaysblah - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    The security center needs an update. I guess maybe in minority but my PC is on a UPS and i have its status connected via USB port. So i have two yellow warnings about LCD being set to max brightness and sleep being turned off, both impacting battery life.

    The problem is there is no way to turn off/confirm those alerts, so i always see a yellow triangle. So i just ignore it now as i have no way to know if there is a new and valid issue.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    The workaround for the LCD brightness notice is apparently to set the screen at 99%. (Seen elsewhere, not tested.)
  • benedict - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    The Creators Update broke the DateTime Picker on all legacy applications. Microsoft are aware of this problem since early March and still haven't done anything to fix this. I've told all my customers who were unfortunate enough to update to revert back to the old version and wait for Microsoft to fix their bugs.
  • JimmiG - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    Is game mode really activated by default? I've always had to open the game bar and check the "User game mode with this game" checkbox.
  • mr_tawan - Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - link

    I think it's enabled by default only in select title and UWP games.

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