+1 If I wanted a VM, I would run a VM. Looks like this is WSL2 only :/

If you want a GUI in WSL1, VcXsrv still works.

It's not perfect: I run IntelliJ in Arch WSL1 and 1) it crashes every time it opens a .md file athough I have (LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1). I have to put -Dsun.java2d.opengl=false -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false in idea64.vmoptions and disable the markdown plugin (maybe only 1 of them is enough) 2) In Windows, IntelliJ automatically saves files when it loses focus. I have to remember to Ctrl-S all the times with IntelliJ in WSL1 3) IntelliJ can't detect where there's a change in the file system. I have to Reload All from Disk all the times.

First I've heard this. I've used neither. What is the major harm of WSL2?

At least for me, WSL1 had pretty good performance on the Windows file system. On WSL2 accessing the Windows file system is pretty slow.

You can read about it here: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197

But compute in general performs better and all non-windows io is way faster.

WSL2 essentially invalidates one of the primary design criteria of the NT kernel, which is that the kernel itself should be able to service any number of "personalities" to provide userspace compatibility with other operating systems.

In practice, this turns out to have meant DOS, OS/2, and a barebones POSIX workalike. Modern Linux is too huge and provides useful APIs that go against the grain of modern NT, so applications are slow in WSL1 and there are too many impedance mismatches to paper over to make the investment worth the effort.

Sure, but I upload my experiments to a Linux cluster and only use my machine for development. Windows IO performance is more important to me than compute.