An improved Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with GUI app support and GPU hardware acceleration is being guaranteed by Microsoft. The company is adding a complete Linux kernel to Windows 10 along with WSL version 2 by the end of the month. Furthermore, the software giant is making moves to support Linux GUI apps which will most likely run with regular Windows apps.

Users will be allowed to use this even if they don’t have Windows. However, it’s actually designed for developers who run Linux integrated development environment (IDE) with regular Windows apps.

Previously, you could use Linux GUI apps within Windows with the help of third parties. However, they always resulted in poor graphics and overall bad performance. With this development, Microsoft is promising a complete renovation and guarantees that no such issues will be faced.

The GPU hardware acceleration will be available in the next couple of months for Windows 10 users. More information will be available by the end of the year.

All of these improvements are directed at developers who want to utilize Windows as a dev box. In the last couple of years, Microsoft has gone up and beyond to surprise everyone with solid improvements to Windows WSL. For example, it added the Bash shell to Windows at Build. As a matter of fact, when

Microsoft added native OpenSSH in Windows 10, it was all that developers could talk about for weeks. Last year, Microsoft’s Windows Terminal command-line tool was launched.

Hence, WSL 2 and the new GPU advancements promise outstanding features as well as some issues. Microsoft has been struggling with compatibility as you may already know. Thus, let’s see how it covers it all and prepares itself for the future!