Last Wednesday (08/04/2020) Microsoft released to insiders the test version 19603 of Windows 10. One of the most interesting novelties brought in this build is the possibility to access the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) file system ) directly through the Windows file manager.
Access Linux files in WSL directly from Windows Explorer
Access to the files of Linux distributions installed through WSL was already possible since version 1903 of Windows 10, but not in the simple and intuitive way as it is being implemented at the moment.
This new feature will make a new item called “Linux” available in the Windows Explorer sidebar. When accessing this item, a directory will be displayed containing folders with the names of all Linux distributions currently installed in WSL. When you open the folder for each distro you will have full access to the files on that system, being able to modify it the way you want directly from Windows Explorer.
This new test version of Windows 10 also brings some other interesting news, such as:
- The correction of a bug that has caused incompatibility with some versions of the anti-cheat BattlEye;
- Resolved an issue that caused incompatibility with some webcam models with video calls in Microsoft Teams (which we talked about recently) in this and in this articles);
- And the new News Bar, which will display news from around 4500 sources in the format of Stories, highlights, etc.
The Beta version of the new News Bar is now available to all users directly on the Microsoft Store.
Conclusion
The new feature being made available to WSL will certainly be quite useful, and will make access to such files much easier and faster.
It is important to note that different from what some people are saying on the internet, the information released at the time of writing this article does not indicate that this new feature will grant access to Linux distribution files installed on dual boot. What was disclosed is that the new functionality will only allow access to distros installed within Windows 10 itself through WSL.
Do you use Windows 10 and WSL? What do you think about this new feature? Tell us more in the comments below!
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Source: ZDnet
That’s all, folks! ?
