WSL for normal stuff. My co-worker is on Windows and had to setup WSL to get a linter working with VS Code. It took him a week to get it working the first time, and it breaks periodically, so he needs to do it all over again every few months.

Unless he is doing Linux development in the first place, that sounds very weird. You most certainly don't need to set up WSL to lint Python or say JS in VSCode on Windows.

I'm developing on Windows for Windows, Linux, Android, and web, including C, Go, Java, TSQL and MSSQL management. I do not necessarily need WSL except for C. SSH is built directly into the Windows terminal and is fully scriptable in PS.

WSL is also nice for Bash scripting, but it's not necessary.

It is a check box in the "Add Features" panel. There is nothing to install or setup. Certainly not for linting, unless, again, you're using a Linux tool chain.

But if you are, just check the box. No setup beyond VS Code, bashrc, vimrc, and your tool chain. Same as you would do on Mac.

If anything, all the Mac specific quirks make setting up the Linux tool chains much harder. At least on WSL the entire directory structure matches Linux out of the box. The tool chains just work.

While some of the documentation is in its infancy, the workflow and versatility of cross platform development on Windows, I think, is unmatched.

This. I have to onboard a lot of students to our analysis toolchain (Nuclear Physics, ROOT based, C++). 10 years ago I prayed that the student has a Mac, because it was so easy. Now I pray they have Windows, because of WSL. The tool chain is all compiled from source. Pretty much every major version, but often also minor versions, of macos break the compilation of ROOT. I had several release upgrades of Ubuntu that only required a recompile, if that, and it always worked.

As Windows/UNIX developer, I only use WSL for Linux containers.

That sounds wild, you can run bash and unix utils on windows with minimal fuss without WSL. Unless that linter truly needed linux (and i mean, vscode extensions are typescript..) that sounds like overkill

Don't you need Cygwin or Git Bash if you don't use WSL? That's kind of fussy.

↑ This!

I would love to buy Apple hardware, but not from Apple. I mean: M2 13 inch notebook with access to swap/extend memory and storage, regular US keyboard layout and proper desktop Linux (Debian, Alpine, Mint, PopOS!, Fedora Cinamon) or windows. MacOS and the Apple eco system just gets in your way when you're just trying to maintain a multi-platform C++/Java/Rust code base.