Release Notes for Windows Subsystem for Linux kernel

Article
08/19/2022

We've added support for WSL 2 distributions, which use a full Linux kernel. This Linux kernel is open source, with its source code available at the WSL2-Linux-Kernel repository. This Linux kernel is delivered to your machine via Microsoft Update, and follows a separate release schedule to the Windows Subsystem for Linux which is delivered as part of the Windows image.

5.15.57.1

Release Date: Prerelease 2022/08/02

Official GitHub release link

Initial release of the WSL2 kernel based on the v5.15 kernel series
Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.15.57.1
Update to stable kernel version v5.15.57
Enable Retbleed mitigations in x86_64 builds
Enable nftables and traffic control
Enable VGEM driver
Fix 9p filesystem regressions since the last v5.10 WSL2 kernel
Enable support for the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) clock device
Enable the Landlock Linux Security Module (LSM)
- https://landlock.io/
Enable the Miscellaneous Control Group (CGroup)
- https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.15/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.html#misc
Disable support for the Ceph Distributed File System

5.10.102.1

Release Date: Prerelease 2022/05/09

Official Github release link

Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.102.1
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.102
Disable unprivileged BPF by default
It can be re-enabled by setting the kernel.unprivileged_bpf_disabled sysctl to 0
Update Dxgkrnl Version to 2216
Fix out of bounds array access for ioctls[]
Implement wait for sync VM bus messages as “killable” to allow killing a process waiting for a synchronous call to the host
Flush device for termination when process is destroyed to avoid a deadlock when the guest process is killed

5.10.93.2

Release Date: Prerelease 2022/02/08

Official Github release link

Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.93.2
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.93
Enable CH341 and CP210X USB Serial drivers
Fix README.md build instructions to include dwarves dependency for pahole
Switched Dxgkrnl Version to 2111
Removed the limit of existing and total sysmem allocations
Properly flush the device for termination during process cleanup
Fixed SPDX-License-Identifier for d3dkmthk.h

5.10.81.1

Release Date: Prerelease 2022/02/01

Official Github release link

Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.81.1
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.81
Unify the kernel configurations by enabling missing options on arm64
Enable non-arch specific ACPI options
Enable options related to device-mapper RAID
Enable Btrfs
Enable LZO and ZSTD compression

5.10.74.3

Release Date: Prerelease 2021/11/10

Official Github release link

Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.74.3
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.74
Enable BPF Type Format (CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF) for use by eBPF tools (microsoft/WSL#7437)
Updated Dxgkrnl version to 2110
Enable the Buffer Sharing and Sync File Frameworks (CONFIG_DMA_SHARED_BUFFER, CONFIG_SYNC_FILE) for Dxgkrnl usage
Fix Dxgkrnl build failure with GCC versions older than 8.1 (microsoft/WSL#7558)

5.10.60.1

Release Date: 2021/11/02 ( Prerelease 2021/10/05 )

Official Github release link

Release rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.60.1
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.60
Enable virtio-pmem with support for PCI BAR-relative addresses
Enable vPCI support under Hyper-V for arm64
Enable io_uring support
Enable USB over IP support
Enable paravirtualized spinlock support for x86_64
Refresh dxgkrnl driver to pick up bug fixes and code cleanups
Enable NFS client support for NFSv4.1
Enable USB kernel configuration options for interacting with an Arduino over USB
Provide a WSL2-specific README.md

5.10.43.3

Release Date: Prerelease 2021/07/12

Official Github release link

Version rolling-lts/wsl/5.10.43.3
Update to upstream stable kernel release 5.10.43
Improved dxgkrnl driver
New revision of arm64 Linux on Hyper-V series (v9)
Always use the Hyper-V hypercall interface on arm64 guests to support running on all versions of Windows