A nifty Windows app that boots a full Linux desktop in a window, wiring together the wslc container API, WinUI Reactor, Azure Linux 4.0, .NET 10, with a pinch of nostalgia.
I wanted to try out some of the cool stuff that came out of Microsoft Build 2026.
I was inspired in part by Craig Loewen 's Herbert demo . I had to take it a bit further because I have a problem.
I will say this up front. It is a toy. The build steps require compiling unstable WSL from main to get the container runtime early, it shoves Fedora desktop packages onto a server distribution that was never meant to have them, and it leans on an early source build of a WinUI experiment.
Four things from Build 2026 do the work here. Each one is interesting on its own. Together they make the demo.