Today, Linux is the prominent platform for hybrid cloud innovation, with forward-thinking developers choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the platform for building and running their applications across all the footprints of the hybrid cloud. RHEL provides a consistent, stable, and secure Linux for today’s applications and those designed to span well into the future.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed and built to run anywhere. As many enterprise IT organizations and developer teams have standardized on Windows environments for their developers, these developers need to build their Linux applications on Windows desktops. Microsoft provides the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which lets you run Linux environments on Windows without having to spin up a traditional virtual machine (VM).
RHEL on WSL is here
Last November, Red Hat announced our intent to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, to WSL. Today we are making it easy for all developers using WSL to install and run RHEL on their Windows machines.
You can take advantage of RHEL for WSL in two ways:
- Download a pre-built image: Anyone with a RHEL subscription, including the no-cost RHEL developer subscriptions available from developers.redhat.com, can download a pre-built RHEL for WSL image, featuring the latest RHEL versions, for easy installation with WSL.
- Build your own customized image: Easily build your own customized RHEL images, with all the software that you need, formatted for WSL installation, using Red Hat Image Builder.
Red Hat makes it easy to get RHEL and run it on WSL. This is the same RHEL that powers some of the world’s largest enterprises, the same RHEL that fuels the Fortune 500 and the same RHEL that drives supercomputing advancements around the world.
For corporate and enterprise users who require developer support, WSL is a validated software platform for RHEL, and there are several developer support options available from Red Hat. WSL is a supported feature of Microsoft Windows.
For more information, read the following articles:
Last updated: September 2, 2025