Does PxPlus Run on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

[Devon Austen]

A new feature introduced in a Windows 10 update is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). WSL lets users run a Linux environment directly on Windows without the need of a virtual machine. A few different Linux distributions are currently supported: Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, SUSE Enterprise, and Kali.

PxPlus will install on WSL but it will not function 100% correctly. The problem is that WSL is not a complete Linux environment and does not support all of the necessary OS functions needed by PxPlus (https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/blob/live/LTP_Results/15014/Syscalls.txt). In particular, PxPlus is not able to do file or record locking when running under WSL. That being said, it is possible to run PxPlus on WSL if you are only trying to do some basic testing with a single user.

According to Microsoft, the WSL is designed with the purpose of running Linux command line tools directly on Windows. It was not designed to be a full Linux environment and run all Linux applications or any production applications (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq#can-i-run-all-linux-apps-in-wsl).