Windows Subsystem for Linux Is Now Available as an App for Windows 11 Users - Wccftech

Microsoft has released a preview of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which is now available in the Microsoft Store as a store application exclusively for Windows 11 machines. This means WSL is now decoupled from your Windows version, and you can update it like any other app to get the latest WSL features and improvements..

"Traditionally, WSL has been installed as an optional component inside of Windows," Microsoft writes in today's blog post. "This means that you would go to the 'Turn Windows Features on or off' dialogue to enable it, requiring you to restart your machine. The actual binaries that make up WSL’s logic in that optional component are part of the Windows image and are serviced and updated as part of Windows itself."

This change moves those binaries from being part of the Windows image, to instead being part of an application that you install from the Store. This decouples WSL from your Windows version, allowing you to update through the Microsoft Store instead. So now once new features like GUI app support, GPU compute, and Linux file system drive mounting are developed, tested and ready for a release you will get access to it right away on your machine without needing to update your entire Windows OS, or going to Windows Insider preview builds.