Fedora 42 now officially supported on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Fedora Linux has become an officially supported distribution on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), starting with Fedora 42. This development provides a native option for developers who want to run Fedora tools directly within their Windows environment, and run Linux and Windows applications side by side, reducing reliance on virtual machines

To get started, users can install Fedora 42 on WSL using wsl –-install FedoraLinux-42 and then launch it with wsl -d FedoraLinux-42. After installation, the setup allows users to set a username, with accounts configured without a default password. These accounts are assigned to the wheel group, enabling the use of sudo for administrative tasks. While Fedora on WSL does not initially include Flatpak, users may install it manually, and improvements to Flatpak integration are underway. The Fedora team is also working to expand support for GUI-based Linux applications and hardware acceleration within WSL, aiming to enhance user experience in future updates.

For developers, the Fedora 42 WSL image comes equipped with key tools such as GCC 15, LLVM 20, Golang 1.24, Ruby 3.4, PHP 8.4, and Python 3.9.