Running Linux containers on Windows with wslc, the container CLI built into WSL

windows - 2026-10-06

WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) runs a real Linux kernel in a lightweight virtual machine on Windows. A newer WSL release adds wslc.exe, a container command line that ships with WSL itself: no Docker Desktop or separate engine to install. A container is a process isolated from the rest of the system, started from an image, a packaged filesystem with an app and what it needs. Commands below are from Microsoft Learn (Get started with containers on WSL) and run in PowerShell. They weren't run here, since this environment has no Windows.

Install and verify

wslc needs WSL 2.9.3 or higher:

wsl --update
wsl --version        # 2.9.3 or higher
wslc version
wslc run --rm hello-world

wslc run pulls the image if it isn't local, like docker run (the same smoke test with Docker or Podman).

Run containers

wslc run --rm -it ubuntu:latest bash -c "echo hello"   # throwaway container
wslc run -d --rm -p 8080:80 --name web nginx           # background, host port 8080 to container port 80
curl localhost:8080
wslc container list                                    # add --all for stopped ones
wslc exec web cat /etc/os-release                      # run a command inside
wslc container stop web                                # --rm removes it once stopped

The port is published to Windows, so localhost:8080 works from a Windows browser.

Build your own image

Put a Containerfile (Docker's Dockerfile) at the project root, keep the project on the Linux file system rather than under /mnt/c (Microsoft's note: much faster file access), then:

wslc build -t myapp .
wslc image list
wslc run -d --rm -p 8000:8000 --name myapp myapp
wslc container logs myapp
wslc exec myapp uname        # Linux
wslc container stop myapp

Inspect and clean up

wslc container inspect <id>
wslc container logs <id>
wslc image inspect <image>
wslc stats                   # resource use of running containers
wslc container prune         # remove stopped containers
wslc image prune             # remove unused images

wslc --help and wslc <command> --help list the rest. The commands mirror Docker's: run, exec, build, with container and image subcommands.

Sources

• Microsoft Learn: Get started with containers on WSL, from MicrosoftDocs/wsl, fetched 2026-10-06.
• Not tested: the commands come from that page, and wslc isn't available on Linux.

Created 2026-10-06T17:22:28+02:00 · Edit