With the Anniversary Edition of the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system (OS), Microsoft provides a an Ubuntu-based Bash shell that will allow you to run Linux software on your Microsoft Windows 10 system. If you are unsure whether the Anniversary Edition update to Windows 10 is installed on a system, you can follow the steps listed at Determining which version of Windows 10 is installed. You can also use the instructions at Determining the version of Microsoft Windows from the command line. The Anniversary Edition is version 1607 of Windows. Or just checking the software build will reveal whether the Anniversary Edition is installed; if you see "build 14393" or later, then the Anniversary Edition is installed on the system.
The Windows system will also need to be using the 64-bit version of Windows 10 rather than the 32-bit version - see Determining if your version of Windows is a 32-bit or 64-bit version for methods that can be used to determine if the installed version of Windows is a 32-bit or 64-bit version.
If the version of Windows is appropriate, then you can follow these step by step instructions to install the Linux subsystem.
