Latest Windows 10 19H1 Insider update 18272 breaks WSL, to be fixed next week

One of Microsoft’s most beloved additions to Windows 10, well at least it gets a lot of developer love, is WSL, or Windows Subsystem for Linux. With it, developers and administrators can get to a Linux command line directly from Windows without having to run a VM or a dedicated Windows box, and with half of all VMs on Azure running Linux, it’s a useful and necessary tool. However, with this week’s latest Windows 10 Insider build, 18272, WSL is broken:

PSA – WSL wont work in Insiders Fast Ring Build 18272. The issue is now fixed and flighted for next weeks Fast Build. We recommend waiting until then to install. Sorry for the inconvenience ☹️ https://t.co/OhSHjzNbgq

— Tara Raj (@tara_amzn) October 31, 2018

A developer for WSL, Ben Hillis, and a program manager, Tara Raj, both confirmed on Twitter that the feature is broken in this build. At least we have a pretty good indication that there will be a new build next week, as according to the two it will contain a fix for the problem, so the issue, while annoying for some, will not (hopefully) be long lived.

If you have installed 18272 and are missing WSL, you can either roll back or wait a week for the next build, and if you haven’t yet installed 18272, you might want to wait.

We’ll have more on all the latest Insider build news as it happens, including the re-appearance of the Windows 10 October November 2018 Update, so be sure to keep coming back to OnMSFT.com!