From PC World, By Thorsten Eggeling:
There are many open source programs (aka code that’s accessible to the public) out there for both Linux and Windows. For programs and tools where that’s not the case, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is the ideal solution for using Linux programs on Windows computers. This means that you don’t have to start Linux first and can use the Linux program in the currently active Windows.
Programs in WSL run slower than under native Linux, but it’s not always noticeable. Microsoft is also continuing to work on improvements that will be incorporated into the Linux kernel. A newer kernel can therefore speed up WSL.
In WSL 2, the Linux kernel runs on a hypervisor (Hyper-V), similar to its Linux counterpart KVM/Qemu. The kernel offers functions to ensure communication between the guest and host systems. This concerns, for example, the shared use of the main memory and CPU management. The program code for this comes primarily from Microsoft.
For Linux users, newer kernels offer support for newer hardware and performance optimizations. Microsoft also regularly optimizes the Hyper-V code in the kernel, but the hardware drivers hardly play a role in WSL because the virtual hardware always remains the same. However, there are drivers that are required for certain applications such as network block devices (nbd), which can be used to mount virtual hard disks in VHD format, for example.
