It’s Wednesday. And keeping up with tradition, Microsoft has just released build 20150 to the Dev channel. And this version of the Insider Preview is one of many firsts.
For starters, it is the first new build since the Fast ring was renamed to the Dev channel earlier this week. And it is also the first build from the rs_prerelease branch, since the Fast ring was moved to the mn_release branch about a month ago.
This version is from the Iron development branch, which is the codename for the 21H1 release.
The feature update that will arrive in the first half of next year.
But as is now the new norm, the features you will see will not be tied specifically to this release. And there is quite a bit new in build 20150, for a change.
Microsoft recounts three new features in this version, namely GPU compute, WSL install, and WSL update. These are all for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, with the software titan billing them as exciting new additions.
And these truly are.
For example, GPU compute allows your Linux binaries to leverage your graphics processing unit, which not only makes it possible to do more machine learning development and data science workflows directly in WSL, but also to use your graphics chip for multimedia.
Next up is a new command that lets you install WSL with just one command. The third feature, as you guessed it, gives you the ability to easily manage the Linux kernel version used by the WSL 2 distros and update when needed.
That’s basically about it.
But with the new builds now arriving from the Iron branch, we should finally start seeing some new features before it hits the RTM status sometimes around December, and move to servicing before its rollout next spring.
Essentially, a similar trajectory to the 20H1 release.
