And the LTS-specific apps as well.
If you’ve been a user of Ubuntu on WSL for long enough, you may have noticed that some of our applications are no longer updated in the Microsoft Store. If you search for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS in the Microsoft Store without logging into your Microsoft account, you won’t find the app anymore. That’s because we have deprecated the Microsoft Store application format for distributing Ubuntu on the WSL platform.
Old releases may still appear in the Microsoft Store
If you log in with an account that previously installed Ubuntu 22.04, you’ll only find an old version. That’s a consequence of how the Microsoft Store handles the deprecation of apps: after an app is made unavailable, new users can’t discover or acquire it from the Microsoft Store, but users who have already installed the app can continue using it, and the app isn’t automatically uninstalled.
The default Ubuntu app and Windows 10 compatibility
We continue to update the default Ubuntu app on the Microsoft Store to the latest LTS as soon as it reaches its .1 release. That ensures compatibility with Windows 10, which we will continue to support as long it has a significant number of WSL users (yes, we know you’re still out there and rely on Ubuntu on WSL!). The .appx format remains required during that initial WSL setup.
What this has to do with the new distribution format for WSL
If you primarily use wsl.exe --install -d <DISTRO> to set up your Ubuntu on WSL instances, almost nothing has changed for you, except for the fact that Ubuntu(Preview) is no longer available through that installation method.
That’s a direct consequence of the rollout of the new tar-based distribution format for WSL, which was announced in late 2024. We quickly adopted this format for upcoming releases of Ubuntu on WSL, starting with the .2 release of Noble – the first LTS released since that format was announced. From there, we began migrating existing LTS releases as well, finally deprecating the .appx format.
Benefits of the new distribution format
Distro maintainers benefit from simpler maintenance and hosting ownership. We no longer need to bundle a Windows .appx package or maintain an account in the Microsoft Partner Center portal to distribute WSL images. This allows us to own our image hosting and keep our release process aligned with other platforms like Desktop and Server.
Users benefit from consistency. Previously, you could set up WSL instances in two ways: via the distro launcher Win32 executable (part of the .appx package) or directly via wsl.exe --install -d Ubuntu-24.04, for example. These would occasionally fall out of sync during the brief window between an .appx package store release and the DistributionInfo.json manifest update in the microsoft/WSL repository.
Easier customization. You don’t need Visual Studio and application signing certificates in order to customize an Ubuntu image. Instead, you can use well known Linux tools, such as chroot and tar, and install packages or edit configuration files, to produce a preconfigured version of Ubuntu to suit your own needs (or your organization’s). We have a guide in our documentation covering this process in detail.
What about Ubuntu(Preview)?
Ubuntu(Preview) was built as a continuous integration job that automatically published daily images of the in-development version of Ubuntu to the Microsoft Store without human intervention. That was great for enthusiasts looking for the most up-to-date content, despite the occasional breakages.
While we still build these images as usual, we no longer publish them to the Microsoft Store, so we can focus our efforts on the tar-based pipeline. We could set up a CI job to push daily updates to the microsoft/WSL repo with updated URLs and checksums, but that would burden WSL maintainers with high-frequency PRs of questionable value to them.
Since users of Ubuntu(Preview) are tech-savvy and know what they’re doing, we know they can work directly with our image hosting. If you’re impacted by the unavailability of the preview app, head over to our image hosting website, pick your daily-image of choice, and double-click to install it on Windows. Alternatively, use CLI commands such as wsl --install --from-file <IMAGE_PATH> --name <CHOOSE_A_NAME> --version <1 or 2>, which comes with a greater flexibility made possible by the new tar-based architecture.
Links
https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-wsl-new-format-available
https://ubuntu.com/wsl/docs/stable/howto/custom-ubuntu-distro/