shipping with windows 10 21h2 or windows 11

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

is this going to ship with windows 10 update 21h2 or windows 11 or both?!

[Biswa96]

This topic is being discussed here https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/discussions/82

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

@Biswa96 doesn't really have a concrete answer to my question will they ship it to windows 10 or not? i can't upgrade to windows 11

[spronovo]

WSLg will ships with Windows 11. At this time there are no plan to enable WSLg in Windows 10.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

you developed and tested the feature for months on windows 10 and now telling us it's not coming just because little disappointed here @spronovo

[crramirez]

WSLg will ships with Windows 11. At this time there are no plan to enable WSLg in Windows 10.

Thank you, @spronovo, for your sincerity. Knowing this now helps us who develop WSL solutions for other users to be prepared and offer alternatives to ones that cannot upgrade to Windows 11, also ones (enterprise users) that won't wish to upgrade yet.

[exitdown]

yep, no suprises from microsoft then. always suspected the deliberately cagey language of "the next major release of windows" very dissapointing still.

[thany]

WSLg will ships with Windows 11.

That is essentially limiting this feature to the fortunate few who have been selected by Microsoft to be allowed to run Windows 11, for a feature that emulates scenarios that happily run on computers that are essentially decades old.

Do you not see the irony?

At this time there are no plan to enable WSLg in Windows 10.

Please make those plans at your earliest convenience. No shame in asking for help planning. We all know planning is a challenge, especially in complicated projects like WSL.

[Masamune3210]

I think you misunderstand how much work is involved with getting this running, it's not as simple as just making a plan

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

i think it is they didn't even bother to change the windows 10 screenshot in the readme file even the project prerequisites tells you need windows 10 insider built and not 11 the feature was developed, tested and advertised under windows 10 all of the sudden after windows 11 announcement windows 10 can't run it without a reason i call bullshit https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-initial-preview-of-gui-app-support-is-now-available-for-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-2/

[exitdown]

upvote my 'enhancement request' and tell your freinds :) https://github.com/microsoft/wslg/issues/414

[Masamune3210]

If its such a important feature, why not just upgrade to 11 when it comes out? They already have said that you will be able to manually install 11 even if you don't meet the new requirements for upgrade

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

you wouldn't get drivers or system updates and your old drivers aren't guarantee to work also you still need tpm 1.2 which i don't have and i don't like what windows 11 has to offer so far https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-may-not-get-security-updates-on-unsupported-devices/

microsoft isn't clear about anything windows 11 related like it's a state secret or they just didn't plan for it and rushed it out

[mempler]

If its such a important feature, why not just upgrade to 11 when it comes out? They already have said that you will be able to manually install 11 even if you don't meet the new requirements for upgrade

Straight up, not everyone has support for Win11, E.G I don't have an TPM module and my CPU fx 8350 is simply not supported. I simply do not see a reason why i would ever want to have a TPM module implemented. the last time i've had ransomware was like... Never, or a virus, also something i haven't had in like 8 years. Only kids who crack random ass software get this shit or people who don't know what they're doing. but quite literally a useless module for technically served people.

Also, i cannot afford to spend 800 bucks for a new freaking computer, especially in a chip shortage we have today. literally 3 times the price it used to be, even second hand.

[exitdown]

Im Sure the engineering team would be more than happy to allow the feature in a windows 10 feature update, and all they need to do that is enough people to request the feature. theres no need to do it in a rude way, just upvote the feature request. if we got enough upvotes they'd be able to justify the dev time. its that simple. management obvioulsy doesnt think there is enough people who care about it to warrant maintaining the feature on two codepaths, and if im being honest, comparatively speaking its a niche edgecase feature already - but the target audience of this feature is most likley to also want to use it on windows 10. so obviously the solution is simply upvote the enhanceent request till theres enough justification..... no need to argue against or for. just upvote the enhancement and give them some raw numebrs. management want raw numbers.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

do you know how many feature requests got thousands of upvotes on feedback hub and uservoice were there for years and no one cared upvotes don't mean much for example

also you seem to get that one wrong we are not talking about a feature they announced for windows 11 and we demanding to be on windows 10 too like wsa or something we are talking about a feature that was already planned developed and tested on windows 10 and they decided to make it exclusive to windows 11 it's literally on windows 10 insider builds right now so

[exitdown]

no- i was here from the beginning of wsl, an active tester, and wgl too - im simply stating that if you want the team to have any chance whatsoever of having their governance give them the authority to spend capex and opex resources on implementing it there has to be an obvious justification for that - upvoting an enhancement request is a way for the community to contribute to that justification. - also adding tabs to file explorer is a core change to a core feature - this is an enhancement to a brand new feature thats still in active dev and not at "production quality" standard yet - big difference.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

"spend capex and opex resources on implementing it there" that's my whole point it's already there

and my other point was no matter how many upvotes a feature gets if it aliened with microsoft vision they will do it no matter what and if not then tough luck

your point was keep upvoting and they will do it eventually then it became unless it's a core feature that needs a core change then upvotes don't matter pick a lane

[thany]

@Masamune3210

I think you misunderstand how much work is involved with getting this running, it's not as simple as just making a plan

Can you explain why it is so much more work to get it to work on Windows 10, versus Windows 11?

[sabbyX]

the feature was developed, tested and advertised under windows 10 all of the sudden after windows 11 announcement windows 10 can't run it.

@ahmed-abdelrazek you are likely missing out the fact that the build 21364 was part of Windows 11 development, technically they were testing WSLg under Windows 11, not Windows 10.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

@sabbyX maybe you are right but i'm not the one that kept calling it windows 10 preview even after that build windows 11 started at 22000 yet but which also required a 20000 build

and that's part of the problem i'm talking about no clear communication from Microsoft i guess everything is going to be more clear in a few weeks now after the official release for both windows 10 21h2 and windows 11 maybe they planned on windows 10 21h2 to be 20000 build but they just said no it's on life support now don't bother just bug fixes and minor changes to 21h1

[exitdown]

i love how theres 73 downvotes on the fact they arent releasing for windows 10, but only 45 upvotes on my enhancement request. and people who presumably want the feature are instead attacking everyone arguing for simply requesting that it be a feature and lending weight to it with bullshit arguments about "it wont make any difference" and honestly its almost as if none of you have had any experience developing software in a commercial environment. its microsoft, they have corporate agenda and corporate governance. its that simple. if you give them some statisticis they can paint on a pretty graph to show the marketing douche who has been placed in a position to make decisions about the engineering of the products, then he might be inclined to authorise the work. if you dont do that, theres no way he will, because marketing douches dont listen to engineers, they listen to sales douches, and pie charts. its really simple stuff, and you guys bitch fighting about it internally are just an embarrassing cliche at this point. i give up.

[crramirez]

Enterprise adoption of WSL can make things change. In the past, they have backported, for example, WSL2 and other minor updates due to enterprise customers tend to be slower in upgrading their Windows.

They first need the numbers on how Windows 11 is being adopted. By the end of 2022, they'll know if many companies stay on Windows 10 until 2025 that use WSL and want WSLg. But if the adoption is very high, no backport will take place.

Until then, @exitdown, don't give up; these votes up will be relevant then. Not now.

[thany]

Well if Microsoft can make Windows 11 run on my machine, all will be forgiven (from my end).

And they absolutely CAN, but they are making unreasonable arbitrary system requirements, which is one of the reasons folks want Windows 10 to keep being improved - simply because Windows 11 refuses to run on their perfectly capable machine. I think that's why there's so much discontent against this decision.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

just as a reminder https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-directstorage-coming-windows-11-and-windows-10

[boarder2]

WSLg will ships with Windows 11. At this time there are no plan to enable WSLg in Windows 10.

This feels like such a huge missed target. WSL is there for developers and enterprise users. The majority of who won't be running Win 11 for years yet, especially given the hardware requirements for Win 11.

The early announcements and demos of WSLg were done on Win 10. I feel like this goes against everything Microsoft has been doing to be more open and available everywhere. What a complete let down.

Edit: I do understand now that these were insider builds, so they were built on technology that was intended for Win 11, not 10. However my disappointment still hasn't changed.

[Biswa96]

There is something https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/commit/a49448706f7c4569c72deea4d0874755339f8bc0

[jackblk]

There is something MicrosoftDocs/WSL@a494487

Seems like it's bundled with WSL now, but the app itself requires build 22000 or above

[nyouna]

WSLg will ships with Windows 11. At this time there are no plan to enable WSLg in Windows 10.

This feels like such a huge missed target. WSL is there for developers and enterprise users. The majority of who won't be running Win 11 for years yet, especially given the hardware requirements for Win 11.

The early announcements and demos of WSLg were done on Win 10. I feel like this goes against everything Microsoft has been doing to be more open and available everywhere. What a complete let down.

Completely agree. the target are devs, and most enterprise devs won't be able to upgrade to Win11 their IT controlled computer for a long time...

Too sad. :(

[paulius-valiunas]

I might be able to upgrade, but the problem is I don't want to. Windows 11 has horrible UX (excessive padding, rounded corners wasting space everywhere, lack of taskbar customization, menus that move around and block any form of muscle memory etc.) and it will take a while for all these problems to be fixed, if they're ever fixed at all. I'm still hoping for some 3rd party customizations to appear, fixing some of the glaring UX problems that Microsoft is clearly not going to fix. Isn't it ironic that I found out about WSLG by watching the VS2022 launch event where most of the demos were made by Microsoft developers using Windows 10 with customized taskbars? Microsoft, even your own developers don't use Windows 11, so how can you expect other developers to adopt it early?

Enough rant. My point is, WSLG not supporting Windows 10 is a huge problem and not only in corporate environments.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

@paulius-valiunas you can always wait for windows 12 when this one flops and they rush to release the next one but you can try https://github.com/builtbybel/ThisIsWin11 and https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/

[Biswa96]

This question may seem to be off-topic but it may hint something with WSLg. Can anyone running Windows 10 non-insider stable build check if the init binary contains boot.command string in it with this command grep -ai boot.command /init? If yes please reply with the full Windows OS build number.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

@Biswa96 returns nothing

[thany]

I might be able to upgrade, but the problem is I don't want to. Windows 11 has horrible UX (excessive padding, rounded corners wasting space everywhere, lack of taskbar customization, menus that move around and block any form of muscle memory etc.) and it will take a while for all these problems to be fixed, if they're ever fixed at all. I'm still hoping for some 3rd party customizations to appear, fixing some of the glaring UX problems that Microsoft is clearly not going to fix. Isn't it ironic that I found out about WSLG by watching the VS2022 launch event where most of the demos were made by Microsoft developers using Windows 10 with customized taskbars? Microsoft, even your own developers don't use Windows 11, so how can you expect other developers to adopt it early?

Enough rant. My point is, WSLG not supporting Windows 10 is a huge problem and not only in corporate environments.

Yes.

It's also just plain bullshit. There is absolutely no logical or technical reason that Windows 10 couldn't do this. I'm willing to bet that MS has to do way more to get it working in Windows 11, compared to Windows 10.

Beause it already worked fine in the Insiders version. SIGH.

So either Microsoft is using every excuse in their book to force people to upgrade before they're ready (wouldn't be a first, ey, Microsoft?!) or this feature has been built by a team of brilliant experts that are now sacked, and been replaced by newcomer interns.

So for the rant, but this is just absolutely fucking ridiculous. Period.

[spronovo]

Hey folks, please remember to keep the discussion opened and respectful.

Our target audience for WSL/WSLg are developers. We understand that not all developers can move to Windows 11 due to enterprise policy outside of their control or even if they can upgrade, may chose not to for various other reasons.

We've heard loud and clear that the community would like to see WSLg supported on Windows 10. From my perspective, this is a great problem to have, it means we built something that folks love enough to be passionate about it, so thank you :-).

Getting WSLg supported on Windows 10 seamlessly isn't as trivial as I've seen it claimed here and in many other channels. Let me assure you there is no evil master plan blocking it. Quite the contrary, this is something the WSL & WSLg team would like to see happened as well.

The idea that it was available in Windows 10 before Windows 11 was introduced and was explicitly blocked after the introduction of Windows 11 for some evil plan isn't accurate... a better way to think about this is that the "Windows 10" build we had been flighting for a while were really Windows Next build under development / or Windows 11 in disguised if you prefer! Windows 11 without some of the UI pieces so those could be revealed as a surprise later. As with all software, changes are incremental build to build... and the Windows Next builds we had been flighting WSLg on for a few months were really the branch/basis that would become Windows 11. The actual Windows 10 branch (e.g. 21h2) never had any of those changes in the first place, so nothing was ever removed from Windows 10.

With Windows 10 21h2 update we did a lot of work to port WSL vGPU support back to Windows 10. We did have to move a lot of code back to the actual Windows 10 branch, work with our partners to get their driver working and ready against this older version of WDDM and validate the whole thing. We did this in recognition that many of our developers wanting to use this would be running Windows 10.

For WSLg, there were additional changes that were required but impractical to get in Windows 10 through the 21h2 servicing process for various reasons. In particular changes to mstsc, the RDP client WSLg uses, which are always tricky to validate for regression as this component is use in so many scenarios. Changes to the WSL Core infrastructure to support the system distro, etc...

You may have recently seen our blog post on WSL coming to the store. This is something we've been planning and working on for a while and are very excited about. This is going to be the new way we will be shipping WSL going forward. Once it is ready, WSL in the store will be replacing the Windows inbox/built-in WSL, but continue to provide exactly the same experience to our developers. This will give us much more flexibility in term of introducing new functionality without being tied to the Windows schedule or release cycle and supporting that functionality uniformly across Windows version (when possible).

The version of WSLg shipped in the WSL store package is using a new RDP client (msrdc) which is distributed along with that WSL package itself. msrdc has been updated for WSLg support and this mean WSLg no longer has a dependency on the Windows 10/11 inbox mstsc client. The WSL Core infrastructure necessary to host the system distro is also part of the WSL package itself and are no longer reliant on things built into Windows! In other words, the version of WSLg shipped in the WSL store package can support both Windows 10 and Windows 11!

However, the WSL Store package isn't (yet) compatible with Windows 10. It's not just a matter of "forcing" an install... there are changes necessary into Windows 10 itself to allow the WSL Core infrastructure in the store package to seamlessly take over from the old inbox infrastructure built into Windows 10 in order to provide the same seamless experience. This is something we are exploring, but we are always very careful about making promise that require changes to Windows and that have to go through our servicing process (think Windows Update) . Given billions of devices literally run Windows 10 and get those updates, we always try to be super careful when bringing changes to servicing to ensure we don’t break the world, are very picky about what we do bring back and have to go through a lengthy approval process for good reason, we need check and balances before pushing changes that can have very big impact on our install base.

Although I can’t make any official promise, if you keep politely asking and upvoting request for WSLg in Windows 10 and are patient you may eventually get rewarded 😊.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

honestly at this point i don't care enough i already got another PC to run Linux on 24/7 and about the evil plans it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft did something like that just this month (we have good reasons to be suspicious) but i will take that explanation -could of told us that months ago- and run with it good enough i guess

[exitdown]

thanks @spronovo good to see the wheels turning int he background. :)

[paulius-valiunas]

Thanks @spronovo, that is great news! I never boughtthe whole "it was removed from Windows 10" thing, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. But I was worried that Microsoft would pull a Windows 10 again and refuse to backport any features because the upper management seems to be very pushy about getting people to use latest versions nowadays. I'm very glad to hear that the possibility is not completely blocked by some corporate policy and that someone is working on it.

[zakius]

Windows 11 without some of the UI pieces so those could be revealed as a surprise later.

so, everything good that 11 brings without all the bad parts? I'd say it should be just shipped this way but oh well, I understand it's not your decision to make and I'm glad to see you're still fighting to get it working

[crramirez]

WSL vGPU support back to Windows 10

@spronovo apart from the vGPU ported to Windows 10. There are other things backported to Win 10 21h2 ? I recently saw --cd. I would like to understand now beyond WSLg what is supported in Windows 10 and what in 11 I lost track of in release notes.

[eALduderino]

WSLg should be supported on any platform running WSL. @spronovo i like the windows store approach, but still, communication should have been more transparent on the win10 wslg situation. I know a lot of ppl who had been waiting for the win10 21H2 release since win11 and/or insider builds are out of discussion for many of their work-related machines. For me as well. That's a total bummer realizing it is missing.

[seffyroff]

Hey folks, please remember to keep the discussion opened and respectful.

Yes, please folks.

...some evil plan isn't accurate... a better way to think about this is that the "Windows 10" build we had been flighting for a while were really Windows Next build under development ...

I think this is the crux of the matter. Me and many other people were working with a build of Windows that was ideal, did everything we wanted and was seemingly arriving in 21H2. I hope you'll appreciate that this still reads like spin to me. Don't backport anything. Move Windows 10 forward instead. What Windows 11 represents is a barrier to development, not a stairway to the code fairies ready to grant our wishes. The Android support is a damp squib, the UI changes are unwanted, and should be optional. C'mon, it's a theme really. The TPM requirement should really be the developer's choice. There's plenty of scenarios where TPM has little use. Windows 11 makes no sense - it's got casual consumer-centric headline features that they don't know they want, and footnote dev features that developers do know they want, but not at the expense of us already having what we'd gotten setup as an ideal work environment, and a huge improvement in Windows as a versatile development platform that was capable of challenging competitors and building a new ecosystem, which is now being effectively dismissed as not a profit center (really, if not that, then what is it? I see no other reason that the arbitrary cutoff would happen at this high point to stop us in our tracks).

Although I can’t make any official promise, if you keep politely asking and upvoting request for WSLg in Windows 10 and are patient you may eventually get rewarded 😊.

This could have been a much more trivial transition if the 'hidden' features to 'surprise' us were more than an unfinished widget set and an advert for Amazon/Samsung.

[paulius-valiunas]

I always thought the Insider program was meant to prevent such "surprises" by gathering feedback before releasing controversial features... guess I was wrong, this one just came out without warning

[Foosec]

Where can one get this Win11 build without the updated UI then? :)

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

@Foosec you can search for a tool that let you download windows 10 build 21390 as iso 😉 but not recommended 😓

[kmshort]

I'm using WSL2 in my datascience lab, and need wslg just for the "wsl --mount" option so I can attach a massive ext4 formatted portable data drive to my wsl2 instance!!!! plus.. many other things. :) but primarily mounting ext4.

[krutzy62]

I would like that spronovo for at least a very long and nicely worded explanation. I for one wanted to know why more than whine. That is more meaningful and actually makes me feel positive MS. I really would like to politely ask most respectively to please work to back porting WSLg to windows 10 with the app. That seems logical to me. Thank again.

[ahmed-abdelrazek]

i agree for the most part the explanation was very good but the ending doesn't set right with me it's more like belittling with empty promise basically saying set there and be a good boy and if we feel like it we may give you the feature that we promised in the first place someday in the future maybe if that answer was in good faith and the true official stand of Microsoft then where is my official tabbed file explorer Microsoft put itself in this position by over promising, weak planning and rush decisions -get windows 11 out as fast as possible- but i digress

[Hashbrown777]

I'm using WSL2 in my datascience lab, and need wslg just for the "wsl --mount" option so I can attach a massive ext4 formatted portable data drive to my wsl2 instance!!!! plus.. many other things. :) but primarily mounting ext4.

Yeah, I dont even care about the g in wsl, I'm always CLI when I dev; but I need wsl --mount --bare. All the reasons for it being hard to backport the graphical stuff should be a non-issue in this regard: --mount shouldn't be tied to the GUI stuff since it appeared in Win10 Insider before wslg was released.

[ZaDarkSide]

Just backport the damn thing from Win 11 to Win 10, I know it's possible, the update system allows it, heck it allows rewriting the whole OS, but I just hear excuses, I can't even run Win 11 even if I wanted, it complains about TPM 2.0 and...that's how much Win 11 sucks for everybody else, bottom line nobody likes Win 11 not developers, not gamers, not normal people period, but that is a whole another matter, anyway better than switching from Win 10 to Win 11 to get WSLg, better is to switch from Win 10 straight to Linux and emulate Win as needed instead of the other way around and ditch this headache. Also don't get me started on Visual Studio and C# another Microsoft product that got into the hot reload controversy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_pzDjw9HQ doing pretty much the same thing, giving something and then taking it back and putting it behind some paywall or bs roadblock.

Although I can’t make any official promise, if you keep politely asking and upvoting request for WSLg in Windows 10 and are patient you may eventually get rewarded 😊.

That will never happen I'm pretty sure. They killed Win 10 for no good reason, nobody cares anymore.

[Masamune3210]

Go take your ranting somewhere else, please. The update system cant "rewrite" everything, its not magic. Besides, what you are literally ragging on about the update system being able to do was already done, its called a major upgrade. Just because for some reason people have an obsession with hating 11 doesn't mean its not literally the same thing that's been happening since 8