WSL containers is now stable: what changes versus Docker Desktop on Windows

WSL containers is the WSL 3.0.1 feature that ships wslc.exe, a CLI with Docker syntax to build and run Linux containers on Windows without installing another engine. It has been stable since 29 September 2026, but it does not read compose.yaml yet, so Docker Desktop is still needed for Compose projects.

October 16, 2026 7 min 7