Also, Linux has some neat free programs for those in education and science. WSL is perfect if you are interested in learning about Linux commands but are still wary of installing a dedicated distro on a partition or using a VM. Since WSL can be enabled even on Windows 10 Home, just about anyone can install and use it. While WSL has been made with developers in mind, end users can benefit from it just as well. Think of it as the inverse of Wine in some sorts. In the words of Canonical's Dustin Kirkland, Ubuntu on Windows is 'bit-for-bit, checksum-for-checksum Ubuntu ELF binaries running directly in Windows'. It is a Windows layer that translates Linux syscalls into Windows syscalls. Heck, it's not even the actual Linux kernel. WSL is neither a Linux virtual machine (VM) nor is it an emulator. Unlike Cygwin, WSL does not require any recompilation and can run a Linux distro and binaries as is. Till the announcement of WSL, this was a popular way of using Linux tools on Windows.

We all know Cygwin, which provides a POSIX API functionality within Windows by running packages that have been specifically recompiled for it. It's not just the availability of tools that makes WSL enticing but also the availability of immense literature, expertise, and coding that goes with these tools. while still retaining their Windows deployment. By offering the ability to run native Ubuntu ELF64 binaries in a Bash shell invoked via the Command Prompt, Microsoft and Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) are making it easy for developers to use familiar Linux-first tools such as apt, ssh, grep, awk, curl, mysql, ruby, perl etc. Web developers have always struggled to move between platforms and often had to adapt to seemingly polarizing workflows. WSL addresses a unique paradigm - most of the web runs on Linux servers while Windows rules the enterprise space.

When Microsoft announced that they were bringing the Bash shell to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update via the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) along with the open-sourcing of PowerShell, it meant that most of the tools that developers and sysadmins rely on were now non-proprietary and cross-platform.

How to install linux on windows 10