Red Hat & Microsoft Bringing RHEL To WSL

The latest Linux distribution being brought to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with Microsoft's blessing is none other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux... Microsoft and Red Hat jointly announced today that RHEL is coming to WSL.

Red Hat announced their intent to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux to WSL. Their motivation for RHEL on WSL is for hybrid cloud strategies and being able to build Linux apps on a Windows system in the same manner they would do on a bare metal RHEL server.

Since last year RHEL Developer on WSL has been possible with some documentation from Red Hat, but now today's announcement seems to be more about making official recognition and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux under this Microsoft Windows environment.

Details are light with the Red Hat blog post today offering few details on their current plans for RHEL on WSL besides acknowledging their intent. The Microsoft announcement linked to by Red Hat isn't currently resolving. Microsoft Ignite is happening this week in Chicago so we'll likely hear more from Microsoft about RHEL on WSL later in a few hours when the conference is underway.

Update: The Windows Command Line Blog is out with their WSL November 2024 update. There they acknowledge that RHEL is becoming an official WSL distribution "in the coming months". The November update to WSL also brings support for a new Tar-based WSL distribution archive, new zero-trust feature updates, and other enhancements.