Just use the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). I was able to install Ubuntu 18.04, do "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade", install additional packages, all on Windows 10. I also managed to compile and run on Linux/Ubuntu/WSL the SageMath package (a complicated piece of Math software complete with Jupyter, Python 2.7, Python numpy, scipy, etc., packages, lots of C/C++/Fortran libraries, other math products/libraries, and an integrated web server (Django I believe)) ... and it ran just fine under Ubuntu-on-Windows just like native Ubuntu. It was as almost as easy as a macOS/Homebrew install.

What about the desktop environment? How does this work? I don't know anything about how WSL works, but what I know is that I don't want to use Ubuntu and apt, and I don't want to use Windows' window manager and desktop environment.