WSL
Windows Subsystem for Linux (by microsoft)
azurelinux
Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances (by microsoft)
| WSL | azurelinux | |
|---|---|---|
| 432 | 102 | |
| 29,109 | 4,467 | |
| 3.9% | 0.4% | |
| 9.2 | 9.9 | |
| 4 days ago | 5 days ago | |
| C++ | RPM Spec | |
| MIT License | MIT License |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
WSL
Posts with mentions or reviews of WSL.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-01.
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Como resolvi o erro “REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG” ao instalar o WSL no Windows 11
👉 Baixar WSL 2.3.24 (MSI)
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Writing your own C++ standard library part 2
Microsoft's DirectX C++ example code needs to interact with DirectX' C APIs. That will easily lead to "C with classes" C++ when most of the code is interacting with foreign APIs, like these API demos do.
I think open-source software like https://github.com/microsoft/WSL is probably more representative of what modern C++ companies look like. Plenty of files that just interact with OS C APIs, but no shortage of modern C++ features in use.
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Microsoft Build 2025 Wrapped
Microsoft continues to be a major contributor to open source and announced a couple major projects moving from closed-source to the open on GitHub. The first is a long-time coming project, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I first used WSL to port a Java stack to Windows. That stack was a nightmare to run on Windows due to a team optimizing for macOS workflows but we wanted to enable new developers to use standard Windows dev machines and stop requiring expensive macOS hardware for a cross-platform native toolchain like Java. Today, WSL is a major part of the Windows developer experience. And now, Microsoft is open-sourcing WSL to allow the community to contribute and innovate on the project on GitHub.
- WSL(Windows Subsystem for Linux) is now open source
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The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9049#issuecomment-26...
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Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
WSL GitHub Repository
- Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open-source
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F2FS in Microsoft's WSL2? Closed without any word
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/7973#issuecomment-27...
Is there a way to push this without tripping the corporate auto-close bot?
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What I wish I knew about Python when I started
If you are running Microsoft Windows, I want to advise one more prerequisite step that you need to take before getting started with Python or uv: install the Windows Subsystem for Linux, also known as WSL2. Do not, for the love of all that is good and holy, try and install Python tooling directly in Windows; install WSL first. This guide outlines all the steps you need to take to get started, though I recommend downloading WSL from the Releases page on Github instead of from the Microsoft Store as advised in Step 3.
azurelinux
Posts with mentions or reviews of azurelinux.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-07-12.
- Microsoft Azure Linux v3
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Windows NT for Power Macintosh
Kind of,
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-platform-b...
However plenty of Azure infrastructure uses Linux as well,
https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sonic-the-networking-...
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Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)
They're even already producing their own Linux distribution, CBL-Mariner, https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux
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GitHub and Developer Ecosystem Control
This became even more interesting as Microsoft started to open source core technology such as Powershell, the DotNET platform, their internal Linux distribution, and much more. All this hosting on GitHub also made sense acquisition wise.
- Reasons Windows Is Going in the Wrong Direction
-
Linux hit over 3% desktop user share according to Statcounter
Quite a few servers and network switches, actually.
- SUSE Preserves Choice in Enterprise Linux by Forking RHEL
- LXD is now under Canonical
- CBL-Mariner – internal Linux distribution for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure
-
What is the future of Windows?
Likely a recognisable ‘Windows’ GUI on-top of CBL-Mariner
What are some alternatives?
When comparing WSL and azurelinux you can also consider the following projects:
Scoop - A command-line installer for Windows.
WSL2-Linux-Kernel - The source for the Linux kernel used in Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2)
wslg - Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios
omi - Open Management Infrastructure
tilt-extensions - Extensions for Tilt
vlmcsd-autokms - Script to automate the installation of vlmcsd as a service and therefore activate Windows :) [Moved to: https://github.com/polkaulfield/vlmcsd-autokms]