WSL is really only a viable alternative to dual-booting for Windows people who have merely dabbled in Linux desktop usage. Admittedly, this is likely the only case Microsoft cares about.

But if you're used to Linux, Windows is not only borderline unbearable in a cultural way, but you're likely to notice that a ton of important pieces of WSL (and the wider Windows CLI environment) are broken, inadequate, missing, or just different in a way that makes them unattractive to longtime Linux users.

> I've got a VM with a full linux distro at my fingertips. [...] when the VM looks and behaves like a regular bash terminal, what more could you realistically want?

To name a few, things, limited strictly to WSL:

  - your distro's normal init system / a standard way to configure persistent services
  - binfmt_misc interop that works consistently (for example, some applications cause hangs for unclear reasons, when I pipe them into `clip.exe`
  - integration for services that involve running agents and/or hardware access (e.g., Docker, GnuPG, SSH)
  - WSLg support on Windows 10,  whose absence is purely artificial (what version of Windows my corporate laptop runs is not up to me)
  - passable performance with files on the Windows side so that basic amenities like a Git prompt in your shell don't suck
  - bridged networking or some other advanced networking configuration