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WSL Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to WSL
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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Windows Terminal
The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!
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AreWeAntiCheatYet
A comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine.
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winapps
Run Windows apps such as Microsoft Office/Adobe in Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora) and GNOME/KDE as if they were a part of the native OS, including Nautilus integration.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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wslg
Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios
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sdk
Core functionality needed to create .NET Core projects, that is shared between Visual Studio and CLI (by dotnet)
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garden
Automation for Kubernetes development and testing. Spin up production-like environments for development, testing, and CI on demand. Use the same configuration and workflows at every step of the process. Speed up your builds and test runs via shared result caching
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xWSL
Installer script for Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 with XFCE 4.18 on WSL. Does not require hypervisor, container, or X11 server.
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SaaSHub
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NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better WSL alternative or higher similarity.
WSL discussion
WSL reviews and mentions
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.
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 24 Jun 2025
Stats
Basic WSL repo stats
432
28,800
9.2
4 days ago
microsoft/WSL is an open source project licensed under MIT License which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of WSL is C++.
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InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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