Not only does Windows 10 Insider build #14951 introduce Bash <–> Windows interop, it also delivers support for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial).
While many of our more intrepid early-adopters have manually upgraded their Ubuntu 14.04 instances to Ubuntu 16.04, as of Windows 10 Insider build #14951, if you clean-install a new Linux instance or uninstall and reinstall your existing Ubuntu 14.04 instance, a recent Ubuntu 16.04 build will be installed on your machine, hot off the build machines of our awesome partners over at Canonical.
Will upgrading to Insider build #14951 upgrade my existing Ubuntu 14.04 instance?
No! We never modify your installed Linux instances – only you can update, upgrade or reinstall your instance. To fully uninstall any existing Ubuntu 14.04 instances (after backing-up an at config or working files), run the following from a cmd/PowerShell console:
lxrun /uninstall /full
to (re) install a fresh new Ubuntu 16.04 instance, run:
lxrun /install
Once the download and installation complete, you’ll be asked to create a new UNIX username and password (these can be different from your Windows login credentials if you wish):
You can then run bash and run lsb_release -a to find out which Linux distro you’re running, although piping it through cowsay & lolcat is optional, but pretty!ย ๐
Why are we now installing Ubuntu 16.04?

We need you to help increase our test coverage and help us deliver a high-quality release!
We can only test so many tools, technologies, and platforms, and what we test may not be what you want and need to run. So we need help from you, our amazing community, to kick our tires, prod and poke at our dark corners, push our boundaries, and stretch our limits.
You shouldn’t find anything unknown, unexpected, or untoward, but if you do find issues, etc., please search and/or file new issues in our GitHub issue tracker. Just for the record though, here are some of the things we are explicitly not supporting (although we do nothing to stop you from trying to get some of these scenarios working)
- We don’t aim to support GUI/X applications or desktops in this release
- We don’t aim to support audio servers or streaming in this release
- We do not plan to support CUDA or GPU-accelerated compute scenarios at this time
- We do not support mounting removable or networked drives in this release
- We strongly discourage modifying any of the files under %localappdata%\lxss from any Windows application – doing so is likely to result in data loss and/or corruption. You have been warned ๐
Also, there are some known issues with Bash/WSL that we’re working to fix or are on our backlog:
- Disk performance is not yet where it needs to be (working on it)
- ifconfig/ip and other network connection enumeration mechanisms don’t yet work (working on it)
We hope you’re as excited as we are to see Bash/WSL improve as rapidly as it has this last few months since it was first announced in April 2016, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
Rich (@richturn_ms), on behalf of the Bash/WSL team.


This is great Rich. I loved notification as well. I can’t wait to have this inside a windows container. Initiate a Linux process inside a windows container! Please, don’t put this in your “not supporting” list. Imagine these commands in a DockerFile.
That’s what Docker is for, no?
Ubuntu 16.04 is working great for me under 14955. Keep up the wonderful work, peeps!
Many thanks Mark. Delighted Bash/WSL is useful for you ๐
You guys are awesome. I love WSL
Updated to 16.04 Xenial support.
I found this useful info by accident…. Why do not you create a mailing list for WSL users?
Any roadmap?
Regards, WSL is my link with win10 windows world…
Rgds, Fco
Good request. Will consider.
Hi! I follow these steps, but it ended installing Ubuntu 14.04.5 again. How can I specify to install Ubuntu 16?
Doesn’t sound like you’re yet running a Windows Insider build: Only insider builds currently download 16.04.
Is there any way to upgrade my wsl without reinstall? I don’t want to reinstall all apps i’ve installed.
Once you’ve upgraded your PC to a recent Windows Insider build, you can manually upgrade to 16.04 using the following:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade
You should put this information in the post too
This will land in the stable branch with the Windows Creators Update, right?
Of course: All our Insiders builds are just ~weekly snapshots of our master branch as we progress towards the next major OS release.
I’ve never been a big mac fan, however I’ve had a macbook pro as my primary dev machine for nearly 10 years now due to the dev tools available in the terminal (I’m a ruby/php dev). My macbook has been on a downward spiral as late; My discrete graphics card causes instability and now my hard drive started giving out this weekend. I just purchased an Asus Zenbook pro today. I’m essentially getting better/equivalent hardware at a fraction of the price, and I’m able to do this now because of the WSL tools you guys are building. This is phenomenal and I want to thank you guys for the hard work you’re putting into this. The only question now is do I want to wait for the official creators release or jump into the insider releases.
Many thanks for your kind words, and welcome back to Windows ๐ We’re delighted to have you back on-board!
As to whether to join Insiders or wait for CU: If WSL is an important part of your workflow, I’d recommend jumping onto the Insider fast-ring: This will ensure that you get the latest bits as soon as possible! We’ve a lot of great improvements planned for our next release which and the velocity of our improvements and new features will remain high after we’ve shipped Creators Update.
Of course, this may mean that you get impacted by the occasional broken feature or wonky behavior, but these issues are generally fixed within a couple of days and are rarely completely-blocking.
FWIW, I run our internal DAILY builds on my main work and main personal machines, and I’ve not yet been prevented from doing my work ๐
For some reason I’m not able to update Ubuntu using lxrun uninstall and install. Response in terminal is ok, but nothing happens.
Any hints on how I can force a fresh install of bash? In advance, thanks a lot!
RTFM ๐ https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/install_guide
After upgrading to Win10 Creators Update …
C:\> lxrun /uninstall /full
C:\> lxrun /install