Linux Binaries on Windows

Important note. I am, unfortunately, unlikely to ever work on this again. Given that Microsoft have killed Interix, I no longer have a machine which will run it, and it was a vile hack anyway that only really worked by accident.

Incidentally, we’ve migrated from SourceForge to GitHub.

в‡ЎWhat?

LBW is a Linux system call translator for Windows. It allows you to run unmodified Linux applications on top of Windows.

It is not virtualisation; only one operating system is running, which is Windows. It is not emulation; Linux applications run directly on the processor, resulting in (theoretically) full native performance.

Consider it as being like WINE, but in reverse.

Right now LBW is in a proof-of-concept stage. It’s in no way suitable for doing real work on as it’s full of bugs. On the other hand it’s adequate for running a Debian chroot, downloading and installing packages with apt and dpkg, compiling and running programs with gcc, connecting to remote servers with ssh, and even running some basic X applications.

Everybody loves screenshots:

Right now LBW runs on 32-bit Windows XP only.

в‡ЎDanger!

LBW is evil. It is about fifteen different hacks all balanced precariously on top of each other. Lots of things in LBW don’t work. Lots of things will never work.

Back up your data, keep your system secure, and above all else:

You have been warned.

в‡ЎImportant links

The bug tracker on GitHub (probably the best place to get in touch with me)

в‡ЎWhere?

You can get the most recent version of LBW from the project download page.

(You can also download the source for the version of BusyBox which is supplied with the LBW installer. Most people won’t need this.)

Important! LBW requires Interix, so you’ll need to install this first. Please see the installing Interix page for instructions.

в‡ЎHow?

LBW works by running Linux code and intercepting the page faults that occur when the Linux code does something that Windows doesn’t like — such as making a system call into the Linux kernel.

When this happens it simply (ha!) looks at the registers, determines what system call the application is trying to make, does it, and returns to the application. The application thinks the Linux kernel did the work; instead it was LBW.

LBW relies on Interix to do the heavy lifting. Interix provides a Unix file system, process model, groups, users, pipes, sockets, etc. LBW’s job therefore becomes vastly easier. Unfortunately, Interix is a rather old-school Unix, and Linux has a lot of functionality that Interix simply can’t do; so we have to emulate it where possible, and fail where not.

Currently LBW implements, with varying degrees of success, 132 different system calls out of a total of about 350. That’s enough to run a lot of programs, although I regularly come across new ones that need adding.

In addition, LBW contains an ELF binary loader for getting applications into memory in the first place, although luckily we can use Linux’ own dynamic loader for dealing with shared libraries.

There’s more to it than that, of course: Linux uses registers rather differently to Windows, so we have to do some really unpleasant things to make that work, which unfortunately are currently badly hurting performance; and the Interix chroot() isn’t useful to us, so I have to implement my own VFS layer; etc.

Can you help? Are you an Interix guru? Do you know more about the Windows NT kernel than any sane person should? If so, check out the technical wishlist page for things that I could really use help on!

LBW is all my own work, and contains no Linux kernel code (apart from trivial lists of symbol names). It’s written in C++ with a tiny bit of inline assembler.

Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10

There are two options available for installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL):

Simplified install (preview release): wsl —install

The wsl —install simplified install command requires that you join the Windows Insiders Program and install a preview build of Windows 10 (OS build 20262 or higher), but eliminates the need to follow the manual install steps. All you need to do is open a command window with administrator privileges and run wsl —install , after a restart you will be ready to use WSL.

Manual install: Follow the six steps listed below.

The manual install steps for WSL are listed below and can be used to install Linux on any version of Windows 10.

If you run into an issue during the install process, check the Troubleshooting installation section at the bottom of this page.

Simplified Installation for Windows Insiders

The installation process for Windows Subsystem for Linux has been significantly improved in the latest Windows Insiders preview builds of Windows 10, replacing the manual steps below with a single command.

In order to use the wsl —install simplified install command, you must:

• Join the Windows Insiders Program
• Install a preview build of Windows 10 (OS build 20262 or higher).
• Open a command line windows with Administrator privileges

Once those requirements are met, to install WSL:

• Enter this command in the command line you’ve opened in Admin mode: wsl.exe —install
• Restart your machine

The first time you launch a newly installed Linux distribution, a console window will open and you’ll be asked to wait for files to de-compress and be stored on your PC. All future launches should take less than a second.

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve successfully installed and set up a Linux distribution that is completely integrated with your Windows operating system!

The —install command performs the following actions:

• Enables the optional WSL and Virtual Machine Platform components
• Downloads and installs the latest Linux kernel
• Sets WSL 2 as the default
• Downloads and installs a Linux distribution (reboot may be required)

By default, the installed Linux distribution will be Ubuntu. This can be changed using wsl —install -d . (Replacing with the name of your desired distribution.) Additional Linux distributions may be added to your machine after the initial install using the wsl —install -d command.

To see a list of available Linux distributions, enter wsl —list —online .

Manual Installation Steps

If you are not on a Windows Insiders build, the features required for WSL will need to be enabled manually following the steps below.

Step 1 — Enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux

You must first enable the «Windows Subsystem for Linux» optional feature before installing any Linux distributions on Windows.

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

We recommend now moving on to step #2, updating to WSL 2, but if you wish to only install WSL 1, you can now restart your machine and move on to Step 6 — Install your Linux distribution of choice. To update to WSL 2, wait to restart your machine and move on to the next step.

Step 2 — Check requirements for running WSL 2

To update to WSL 2, you must be running Windows 10.

• For x64 systems: Version 1903 or higher, with Build 18362 or higher.
• For ARM64 systems: Version 2004 or higher, with Build 19041 or higher.
• Builds lower than 18362 do not support WSL 2. Use the Windows Update Assistant to update your version of Windows.

To check your version and build number, select Windows logo key + R, type winver, select OK. Update to the latest Windows version in the Settings menu.

If you are running Windows 10 version 1903 or 1909, open «Settings» from your Windows menu, navigate to «Update & Security» and select «Check for Updates». Your Build number must be 18362.1049+ or 18363.1049+, with the minor build # over .1049. Read more: WSL 2 Support is coming to Windows 10 Versions 1903 and 1909. See the troubleshooting instructions.

Step 3 — Enable Virtual Machine feature

Before installing WSL 2, you must enable the Virtual Machine Platform optional feature. Your machine will require virtualization capabilities to use this feature.

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

Restart your machine to complete the WSL install and update to WSL 2.

Step 4 — Download the Linux kernel update package

Download the latest package:

If you’re using an ARM64 machine, please download the ARM64 package instead. If you’re not sure what kind of machine you have, open Command Prompt or PowerShell and enter: systeminfo | find «System Type» . Caveat: On non-English Windows versions, you might have to modify the search text, for example, in German it would be systeminfo | find «Systemtyp» .

Run the update package downloaded in the previous step. (Double-click to run — you will be prompted for elevated permissions, select ‘yes’ to approve this installation.)

Once the installation is complete, move on to the next step — setting WSL 2 as your default version when installing new Linux distributions. (Skip this step if you want your new Linux installs to be set to WSL 1).

Step 5 — Set WSL 2 as your default version

Open PowerShell and run this command to set WSL 2 as the default version when installing a new Linux distribution:

Step 6 — Install your Linux distribution of choice

Open the Microsoft Store and select your favorite Linux distribution.

The following links will open the Microsoft store page for each distribution:

From the distribution’s page, select «Get».

The first time you launch a newly installed Linux distribution, a console window will open and you’ll be asked to wait for a minute or two for files to de-compress and be stored on your PC. All future launches should take less than a second.

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve successfully installed and set up a Linux distribution that is completely integrated with your Windows operating system!

Install Windows Terminal (optional)

Windows Terminal enables multiple tabs (quickly switch between multiple Linux command lines, Windows Command Prompt, PowerShell, Azure CLI, etc), create custom key bindings (shortcut keys for opening or closing tabs, copy+paste, etc.), use the search feature, and custom themes (color schemes, font styles and sizes, background image/blur/transparency). Learn more.

Set your distribution version to WSL 1 or WSL 2

You can check the WSL version assigned to each of the Linux distributions you have installed by opening the PowerShell command line and entering the command (only available in Windows Build 18362 or higher): wsl -l -v

To set a distribution to be backed by either version of WSL please run:

Make sure to replace with the actual name of your distribution and with the number ‘1’ or ‘2’. You can change back to WSL 1 at anytime by running the same command as above but replacing the ‘2’ with a ‘1’.

The update from WSL 1 to WSL 2 may take several minutes to complete depending on the size of your targeted distribution. If you are running an older (legacy) installation of WSL 1 from Windows 10 Anniversary Update or Creators Update, you may encounter an update error. Follow these instructions to uninstall and remove any legacy distributions.

If wsl —set-default-version results as an invalid command, enter wsl —help . If the —set-default-version is not listed, it means that your OS doesn’t support it and you need to update to version 1903, Build 18362 or higher. If you are on Build 19041 for ARM64, this command may fail when using PowerShell in which case you can use a Command Prompt instead to issue the wsl.exe command.

If you see this message after running the command: WSL 2 requires an update to its kernel component. For information please visit https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel . You still need to install the MSI Linux kernel update package.

Additionally, if you want to make WSL 2 your default architecture you can do so with this command:

This will set the version of any new distribution installed to WSL 2.

Troubleshooting installation

Below are related errors and suggested fixes. Refer to the WSL troubleshooting page for other common errors and their solutions.

Installation failed with error 0x80070003

• The Windows Subsystem for Linux only runs on your system drive (usually this is your C: drive). Make sure that distributions are stored on your system drive:
• Open Settings -> **System —>Storage ->More Storage Settings: Change where new content is saved

WslRegisterDistribution failed with error 0x8007019e

• The Windows Subsystem for Linux optional component is not enabled:
• Open Control Panel ->Programs and Features ->Turn Windows Feature on or off -> Check Windows Subsystem for Linux or using the PowerShell cmdlet mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Installation failed with error 0x80070003 or error 0x80370102

• Please make sure that virtualization is enabled inside of your computer’s BIOS. The instructions on how to do this will vary from computer to computer, and will most likely be under CPU related options.
• WSL2 requires that your CPU supports the Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) feature, which was introduced in Intel Nehalem processors (Intel Core 1st Generation) and AMD Opteron. Older CPUs (such as the Intel Core 2 Duo) will not be able to run WSL2, even if the Virtual Machine Platform is successfully installed.

Error when trying to upgrade: Invalid command line option: wsl —set-version Ubuntu 2

• Enure that you have the Windows Subsystem for Linux enabled, and that you’re using Windows Build version 18362 or higher. To enable WSL run this command in a PowerShell prompt with admin privileges: Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux .

The requested operation could not be completed due to a virtual disk system limitation. Virtual hard disk files must be uncompressed and unencrypted and must not be sparse.

• Deselect “Compress contents” (as well as “Encrypt contents” if that’s checked) by opening the profile folder for your Linux distribution. It should be located in a folder on your Windows file system, something like: USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.
• In this Linux distro profile, there should be a LocalState folder. Right-click this folder to display a menu of options. Select Properties > Advanced and then ensure that the “Compress contents to save disk space” and “Encrypt contents to secure data” checkboxes are unselected (not checked). If you are asked whether to apply this to just to the current folder or to all subfolders and files, select “just this folder” because you are only clearing the compress flag. After this, the wsl —set-version command should work.

In my case, the LocalState folder for my Ubuntu 18.04 distribution was located at C:\Users \AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc

Check WSL Docs GitHub thread #4103 where this issue is being tracked for updated information.

The term ‘wsl’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.

• Ensure that the Windows Subsystem for Linux Optional Component is installed. Additionally, if you are using an ARM64 device and running this command from PowerShell, you will receive this error. Instead run wsl.exe from PowerShell Core, or Command Prompt.

Error: This update only applies to machines with the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

• To install the Linux kernel update MSI package, WSL is required and should be enabled first. If it fails, it you will see the message: This update only applies to machines with the Windows Subsystem for Linux .
• There are three possible reason you see this message:

You are still in old version of Windows which doesn’t support WSL 2. See step #2 for version requirements and links to update.

WSL is not enabled. You will need to return to step #1 and ensure that the optional WSL feature is enabled on your machine.

After you enabled WSL, a reboot is required for it to take effect, reboot your machine and try again.

Error: WSL 2 requires an update to its kernel component. For information please visit https://aka.ms/wsl2kernel .

• If the Linux kernel package is missing in the %SystemRoot%\system32\lxss\tools folder, you will encounter this error. Resolve it by installing the Linux kernel update MSI package in step #4 of these installation instructions. You may need to uninstall the MSI from ‘Add or Remove Programs’, and install it again.

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