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Bash on Ubuntu on Windows 10 Anniversary Update

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Posted on behalf of Russ Alexander.

It was just three months ago that we announced Bash on Ubuntu on Windows at Build 2016. After working in secret on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for so long it was incredible to see everyone just excited as us for this project. A week later we released the subsystem to the Windows Insider community. Since then we have been overwhelmed with the response that we have received. News articles, blog posts and social media have fueled the excitement for WSL leading to new developer communities that have helped guide and refine our development priorities. It is the support and enthusiasm of our users which has helped us get to where we are today. We are very appreciative of all the bug reports, suggestions, critiques, and ideas which have been submitted. Thank you so much for your help. We look forward to your continued support.

Our original plan was to keep WSL only within the Windows Insider program for the upcoming Windows update with the goal of gauging community feedback and refining quality. However, we have heard a strong and clear message that you would like us to ship WSL with the next Windows release. As a result, we plan to include Bash on Ubuntu on Windows as a beta feature in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Doing this will allow even more people to try WSL and we are excited to see what this new group of users will do.

Moving forward we will be investigating new areas of interest while continuing to support the following scenarios:

  1. GNU command line tools such as grep, sed, and awk
  2. File system and symlink support within the WSL environment
  3. Ability to run apt / apt-get for installs, updates, and package testing
  4. Basic functionality for languages such as NodeJS/npm, Python, Perl
  5. Command line tools such as Vim, Emacs, Git, and SSH

This official beta will be nearly identical to what is in the hands of Insiders today. After release, the beta will be serviced like any other Windows component. New enhancements and fixes will continue to roll out via our Windows Insider program which will remain the best place for the most recent builds and continuous updates. Users should continue voicing feature requests at the WSL User Voice page for prioritization, and report any issues to our Github page. As we continue to develop, new features and fixes we will be reflected on our MSDN documentation.

There is still much work to be done and we have a lot of excitement for the journey ahead. We look forward to seeing all of the great things you will do and make with WSL.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2016
    Honestly, for our company, this is the most anticipated feature/direction for Windows 10. I hope it ROCKS
  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2016
    I lost my start menu. Fixes don't seem to work. What to do?
    • Anonymous
      July 11, 2016
      Hi James, lost the start menu? Interesting. WSL should have no impact on the start menu:If you think this is WSL related I would suggest taking this over to our issues page on github: https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issuesIf this is not WSL related, I would suggest starting with the troubleshooting steps here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12385/windows-10-troubleshoot-problems-opening-start-menu-cortana
      • Anonymous
        September 22, 2016
        Pretty sure you won't see this but there is one thing that makes a large portion of people still favour Apple OS's implementation, it does not seam like the ability for scripts to interact with the network card like some form of passthrough. I need direct access to the network card for my job and thus I've forced to put up with a hideous MacBook and not my Surface Pro 3. Do you think there will be this functionality in future?
        • Anonymous
          October 10, 2016
          Hey Dean. Could you expand on what you mean by scripts interacting with the network? Do you mean using things like ip / ifconfig, etc? If so, we're very aware of this issue and are working to resolve it.
  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2016
    Hi Jack, Thanks for the update, all the new development on WSL is exciting. I'm switching from Mac back to windows at work since I've had some success with WSL, so I hope it continues to be supported in the future! I look forward to having it available in the production release (anniversary update) so some of my coworkers will be able to take advantage of WSL.
  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2016
    Totally digging docker on hyperv driven on wsl. I've been doing web development using ubuntu on virtual machine for more than 4 years and now moved migrated completely.
  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2016
    find ./ |xargs grep 'please' i have never learn findstr
  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2016
    Please add shared memory support in the top list (the issue is already among github issues and inside uservoice voting)
  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2016
    One of the must-haves for developers migrating from a mac world, is the ability to edit files from Windows (VS Code) and watch for changes on the linux side, so that our build tools (like webpack) can automatically rebuild.
  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2016
    Any plans for unix socket support in datagram mode (also making these sockets available on the Windows side, maybe translating into winsock)?
    • Anonymous
      August 01, 2016
      Yes, datagram Unix sockets are on our backlog.
  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2016
    Hello Jack , that's great news .I suggest you eliminate the need to activate the "developer mode" , a deterrent for users not professional. Still , it would be important to eliminate the need for administrative rights to the use of ICMP ( Ping ) . Last thing , a link on the desktop for installing Ubuntu environment would be the most practical thing .
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2016
    I am more excited about this release than I have been of any windows updates in the last ten years. I also found that you could run Xming on your windows and use graphical Ubuntu tools targeting the display back to windows... Many old models we use compile easily on Ubuntu. I am hoping that I will no longer have to host linux servers for students to learn how to model :) They can use their own laptops!
    • Anonymous
      July 19, 2016
      Try VcXsrv, a very fast and fast growing X-Server.
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    Will security testing tools run in the WSL? Will pentesting tools be able to built up and tear down connections and manipulate the TCP stack easily as in *nix distros?
    • Anonymous
      July 20, 2016
      What tools are you interested in running on WSL?
      • Anonymous
        July 29, 2016
        The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2016
    default repository is just to old, and missing important packages.
    • Anonymous
      August 03, 2016
      Agreed. Seems to be working well, though. Hopefully we will get new packages soon.
      • Anonymous
        October 10, 2016
        Canonical tends to freeze apt package repo's alongside their LTS releases.If you want to install the latest versions of tools like git, ruby, python, etc., add Private Package Archive (PPA) sources to your config - then you simply install/update from there.
  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2016
    The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 01, 2016
      Working with Linux stacks / DevOps is a lot easier now that Docker for Windows works with Client Hyper-V on Windows 10 Pro.
  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2016
    Alright guys. Time to do this... I need to retire my Ubuntu VM already...Seriously, not being able to develop properly on Windows and having random stuff not working, is just unfortunate... This problem needs to be killed.
  • Anonymous
    August 01, 2016
    I just started a basic desktop from this environment (installed ubuntu-desktop and tightvncserver)running xterm, xeyes, firefox and mwm window manager screen grab here: http://atpublic.blob.core.windows.net/public/BoUoW-desktop.JPGWay more than I expected to be able to do !
  • Anonymous
    August 01, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2016
    Fantastic work. This is an amazing feature which I'm sure will have very interesting future uses.
  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2016
    The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 12, 2016
      The Windows 10 Anniversary Update will receive critical bug fixes through the standard Windows Update channel. New features and non-critical bug fixes will be made available through the Insider program. We know this is less than ideal for a large number of users but is necessary considering where we are in the Windows stack.
  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2016
    Will ubuntu on windows eventually support GUI applications?
  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2016
    Anyone else tried to activate "Windows Subsystem for Linux" while using BitLocker? I was barely able to get my machine up and running again, lots of error codes and recovery key party. My colleague was not so lucky and had to reinstall everything.I had to disable BitLocker for now or else my PC will freak out every time i reboot. I guess my only choice will be removing the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" and activating BitLocker again :-(
    • Anonymous
      August 22, 2016
      I also could not get my machine to boot with WSL installed and bitlocker enabled. System Recovery was required.
  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2016
    Thank you so much for this. This will help insure that Windows 10 is used by power users.
  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2016
    Hey there :)Thanks for this awesome tool !Do you plan to provide 256 colors terminal feature ?
  • Anonymous
    August 08, 2016
    oh no 32bit... darn.
  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2016
    Are we also getting Windows native SSH server also ?
  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2016
    Its a good step... Thanks
  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2016
    Is there a way to disable this through Group Policy?
    • Anonymous
      August 11, 2016
      The comment has been removed
      • Anonymous
        June 12, 2017
        The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2016
    I just installed WSL on my PC after having done the Win10 anniversary update. So far it seems to work great.WSL appears to be installed in a hidden directory under %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\lxss. I found that I have to install WSL for each user on my PC and wonder if this is ideal, if not overkill. WSL takes up about 2Gb of space and it seems a bit sandboxed as in oblivious to other users on the Windows PC.Would it not have been better to have WSL installed somewhere common such as under %SystemRoot% thereby not needing to clog up filespace with 2Gb for each user wanting to use WSL.
    • Anonymous
      August 13, 2016
      Correction, Linux on Windows only appears to use about 0.5 Gb of disk space after installation. But this soon increases as various packages are installed such as gcc and other basic necessities.
  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2016
    This is the latest article and it's a bit more than a month old. I'd be very interested to hear about what the WSL people are currently working on!
    • Anonymous
      August 25, 2016
      The next round of Insider builds has been pushed out to the fast ring and we have re-kicked off our release notes (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/release_notes). You should be seeing some good stuff from us over the next few months.We also have plans to continue the blog post run and should have more content as things light up.
  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2016
    Hi, thanks for developing WSL, it is realy nice and helpfull.I try to mount remote filesystems via sshfs. ssh itself works very well, but sshfs occurs an error:"fuse: device not found, try 'modprobe fuse' first"and then:"modprobe fusemodprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:556 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/3.4.0+/modules.dep.bin'"it looks like the kernel modul fuse isnt implementet. correct?Does it possible to implement this module?thanks Jörg
  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2016
    This is really awesome and together with Docker Toolkit (I only have Windows Home edition) is turning my Windows machine into an exciting place to develop.
  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2016
    Hi,the WSL is really a great idea.But it allways stops at 13% while searching and installing updates / upgrades.Does someone else has same problems too?Thanks
  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2016
    i have installed gedit on bash win10aniv. via sudo apt-get command. but after that it is showing an error xdg_runtime_dir not set in the environment Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display how can i resolve the problem??i have already done pkexec command..
  • Anonymous
    September 14, 2016
    This is just too cool. I'm a mac fanboy--mostly because macs are unix compliant (my first mac was the G4 mac mini). (I'm a Linux/unix sysadmin.) But I have a win10 system for work. And I really like win10. (Maybe I just like the underdog.) openssh for powershell was definitely nice, but this is tremendous. I think I'll try building 'Linux from scratch' just to see if I can.
  • Anonymous
    September 15, 2016
    Will Hadoop will work???
  • Anonymous
    September 18, 2016
    Hi, thanks for the update. However, I've met with an error I cannot resolve: I neglected to read this beforehand, and excitedly opened a file in my ubuntu subsystem with my windows application, pycharm. Now I cannot view, edit, or delete any files from both the ubuntu subsystem and windows. On ubuntu: rm: cannot remove ‘’: Permission deniedOn windows, a dialog window:You require permission from to perform this action. How should I go about resolving this issue? I can still view the directory structure from both windows and ubuntu bash on windows, but that's all I can do with the folder.
    • Anonymous
      September 25, 2016
      I had a similar issue a while ago. I recall that in order to delete the offending directory I first had to log in with the built-in Windows System Administrator on my PC, then change ownership of the directory and its contents, then grant myself full permissions, and finally I could delete the directory.
  • Anonymous
    September 22, 2016
    hi!is it possible to solve the following:# ufw statusERROR: iptables v1.4.21: can't initialize iptables table `filter': Table does not exist (do you need to insmod?)Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.
  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2016
    Can anyone tell me where to find the system log file? I've looked for /var/log/syslog but that file doesn't exist. I do have several other log files/dirs in /var/log but no syslog.
  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2016
    Good
  • Anonymous
    November 01, 2016
    Is it possible to update the Ubuntu bash version to 16.0.4 such that the gcc GOMP version is 4.0 ? currently the GOMP version that comes as default is v3.1
    • Anonymous
      November 01, 2016
      Ubuntu 16.04 is now the default version that WSL uses.
  • Anonymous
    December 17, 2016
    please add tab support in cmd, i moved onto windows 10 but i think icmp etc is stillnot enabled, so i moved back to windows 7. so these features are a must only for this purpose i use i always run a linux vm on my windows.
  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2017
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2017
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 20, 2017
    Its just been less than a week since I have installed Bash in my PC and I have messed it up a lot. Do i have any option to reset the application ? Because I really don't want to reinstall the application again as it takes a lot of time and a GB of data. Please help !
    • Anonymous
      September 21, 2017
      The comment has been removed