Microsoft Bakes Linux Container Support Directly Into Windows
Cloud Native Now, Friday, October 2nd, 2026
Microsoft's WSL containers (WSLc) let developers build and run native OCI Linux containers on Windows without Docker Desktop.
Microsoft has made WSL containers generally available, an open source Windows Subsystem for Linux runtime for building and running native Linux OCI containers on Windows, with a CLI (wslc.exe) and an API for programmatic control from Windows applications.
Unlike Docker Desktop, it integrates with Intune, which can enable or disable WSL containers and restrict image pulls to approved registries, and with Defender for Endpoint, which surfaces container process, file and network activity.
The article also covers ext4 VHD volumes, VirtioFS bind mounts and a new networking model.