Let's compare apples to apples, then. I can run a full Debian guest in a VM on Windows, too. That's not new, but that appears to be the demonstrated capability of ChromeOS here. WSL is a step further in that it's _not_ virtualized.

apples to apples- WSL is the implementation that's integrated with Windows not a random VM running Linux. Chrome OS has a VM solution that's integrated with Chrome OS (files, apps in the same menus). The comparison is fair.

I haven't run into any compatibility problems, and was able to get my environment running identical to the production server. So how does what you said affect my experience? It works without jumping further into Google's uncertain ecosystem. And when I'm not working, I can fire up my Steam library, all on the same machine.

And that's great. But there will be edge cases when it won't behave like stock Linux. If you do give Crostini a try would love to hear your views :) cheers

The only issues I have found that are inconsistent with stock Linux are on hardware and X11 support. For rails/node/Vue development, WSL is Linux through and through.