Windows version of the venerable Linux “sudo” command shows up in preview build

Enlarge / Not now, but maybe soon? (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft opened its arms to Linux during the Windows 10 era, inventing an entire virtualized subsystem to allow users and developers to access a real-deal Linux command line without leaving the Windows environment. Now, it looks like Microsoft may embrace yet another Linux feature: the sudo command.

Short for "superuser do" or "substitute user do" and immortalized in nerd-leaning pop culture by an early xkcd comic, sudo is most commonly used at the command line when the user needs administrator access to the system—usually to install or update software, or to make changes to system files. Users who aren't in the sudo user group on a given system can't run the command, protecting the rest of the files on the system from being accessed or changed.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, user @thebookisclosed found settings for a Sudo command in a preview version of Windows 11 that was posted to the experimental Canary channel in late January. WindowsLatest experimented with the setting in a build of Windows Server 2025, which currently requires Developer Mode to be enabled in the Settings app. There's a toggle to turn the sudo command on and off and a separate drop-down to tweak how the command behaves when you use it, though as of this writing the command itself doesn't actually work yet.