Microsoft has released a new testing build to users enrolled in the Windows Insider program, and this time there are major improvements aimed at Linux users.

Windows 10 build 20150, which is now available for users in the Dev channel, further improves the Windows Subsystem for Linux support and adds new capabilities for testing.

First and foremost, it’s the GPU compute support for WSL 2, and today’s new build comes with support for NVIDIA CUDA.

To give this new feature a try, you need to be running this preview build with a WSL 2 distro installed, and obviously run the most recent Linux kernel. GPU drivers are also required to enable GPU computer support.

“Additionally, this will also support DirectML, which will empower students and beginners to use hardware accelerated training on the breadth of Windows hardware, across AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs,” Microsoft explains.

Right now, installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux is possible from a dedicated Windows 10 screen that allows users to enable and disable OS features. Needless to say, this isn’t necessarily the most complex process, but on the other hand, Microsoft wants the whole thing to be more straightforward.

So today, Microsoft announces a new command to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 10:
wsl.exe --install
Microsoft says that it’s working to further enhance this command and enable the installation of Linux distros, thus making the process even more straightforward. For now, the command enables WSL in Windows 10 and then prompts you to reboot the system.

“You’ll only see this option on machines that do not have the ‘Windows Subsystem for Linux’ optional component enabled. In this initial release, this command will enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux optional component, as well as the Virtual Machine Platform optional component, and prompt you to restart your machine. In the future we plan to add support to automatically install WSL distros using this command as well,” the company explains.

Furthermore, Microsoft is also adding a new command for WSL 2 to work with the kernel. The addition of a Linux kernel is one of the highlights in WSL 2, and today, the new command makes managing the kernel and the available updates a lot more straightforward. The new command is:
wsl.exe --update
There are three commands supported at this time:

wsl.exe --update
wsl.exe --update --status
wsl.exe --update --rollback

The first command is used to manage updates, while the second displays the update status. The third is specifically used to roll back to a previous version of the kernel.

“The rollback command exists to allow users to easily uninstall the latest update if needed. When any new Linux kernel version is installed, your last used kernel is stored as a rollback kernel. When you execute the above command WSL 2 will load using your rollback kernel (i.e: WSL 2 distros will now load using your previous kernel version). When a new update is available, your machine will automatically install the latest kernel version and WSL 2 will load using that latest version,” Microsoft says.

So when are all of these going live for all users? Right now, Microsoft is only testing all of them as part of insider builds, and because they are shipped to the Dev channel, it means an ETA isn’t yet available. However, it shouldn’t take too long before they are brought to everyone – the next Windows 10 feature update is version 20H2, which is scheduled to be finalized in September and released in November.