Arch Linux now has an official WSL Image … …and it is officially (re)distributed by Microsoft!
A few months ago, the eventuality of building and providing an official Arch Linux WSL image (Windows Subsystem for Linux – a Microsoft solution allowing to run Linux environments within Windows) was brought to the table within the Arch Linux staff.
This subject was actually explored a few years back but got turned down due to multiple concerns and lack of interest at the time. But WSL have come a long way since then and minds evolved to the point where people were generally willing to reconsider it.
Despite being employed as a Linux system engineer, I personally never had the chance to work for a company that allowed me to run Linux on my workstation yet… The usage of Windows was always required by their “internal policy” (whatever that means). It’s unfortunately pretty safe to say that I’m not the only person in that situation.
In such case, WSL acts as a pretty decent and reliable workaround (from my experience), allowing one to run a Linux environment in a fairly transparent way directly from a Windows system; providing a direct access to every Linux tools, hopefully without getting in the way of potential companies’ requirements / restrictions.
