June 4, 2026
File speed glow-up or too late?
WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access
Windows and Linux users are ready to stop fighting over slow files
TLDR: Microsoft has improved WSL so Windows files should open faster from Linux tools, fixing one of the last big slow points. Commenters are split between excitement and skepticism: some want proof, while others say slow speeds already pushed them to Mac or full Linux.
Windows is promising that moving files between Windows and Linux inside WSL is about to get noticeably faster, and the comments instantly turned into a mix of hope, side-eye, and old trauma. The change itself is simple in human terms: Microsoft fixed a behind-the-scenes traffic jam that was slowing down access to files stored on the Windows side. For people who work across both systems, that could mean fewer painful slowdowns when poking around in folders like /mnt/c.
But the real show is the crowd reaction. One camp is basically yelling, "Cool story, where are the benchmarks?" Commenters wanted hard numbers, not vibes, and some were already annoyed that the update doesn’t seem available to everyone yet. Another group was more optimistic, saying if this is anything like earlier improvements, the difference could be so good it’s hard to tell from native speed. That’s the dream.
Then came the spicy blame game. One commenter joked Microsoft is only doing this because so many people unknowingly work out of the slow Windows-mounted folders in the first place. Ouch. And the hottest breakup post? A user said bad WSL file speed drove them to switch to Mac years ago. Another went even further and said they recently left WSL for full Linux, with AI helping make the move painless. So yes, Microsoft fixed the pipes — but the comments make clear some users are still emotionally recovering from the last few years.
Key Points
- •A WSL 2 change merged in May 2026 improves Windows file access by removing a bottleneck on the virtiofs path.
- •WSL 1 used DrvFs inside the Windows NT kernel, allowing near-direct access to NTFS for `/mnt/c` operations.
- •WSL 2 introduced a full Linux kernel in a lightweight Hyper-V VM and initially used a Plan 9 (9P) file server over Hyper-V sockets for cross-OS file access.
- •The article says 9P adds protocol overhead, including a 64 KB message size limit, which can hurt workloads involving many small files.
- •PR #40654 gives each virtio device its own dedicated DMA pool instead of sharing one global SWIOTLB pool, reducing contention between virtiofs mounts and other virtio devices.