WSL is a Linux virtual machine. I'm developing low-latency audio & video software, I'm not going to have my users run it in a VM and require them to install WSL ... So MinGW it is (which is just a port of the GNU tools to windows and a free reimplementation of the windows API headers - the called code is still the MS's "universal runtime" shared libraries so it really does not change anything in my case except more sanity and final binaries faster than than the MSVC ones)