> You mean WSL2.

Yes, indeed.

> I thought it was the coolest thing.

NT was designed to have different subsystems[1]. Win32 subsystem was a layer on top of NT, and was a peer to the POSIX subsystem, and IIRC even OS/2. WSL1 ideas was certainly not new in the context of NT. FreeBSD also has a Linux subsystem.

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Wi...

WSL was orthogonal to NT subsystems however.

It was implemented as an NT "Pico Process", which was a pretty new concept in NT.

I agree - we could already run Linux VM's on windows anyways. The change in architecture from native Linux on native Windows to just another VM on windows was very disappointing. Sure, they improved FS performance but broke a lot of magical stuff that could be done earlier. FS performance for WSL-1 should have been improved by enhancing the Windows API.

Technically WSL1 is superior, sure, but is that what users want? Seems like users are happily using VMs to run Docker on Mac and many don't even know it is VM underneath. I suppose max compatibility with Linux kernel is more of a desirable behavior, plus the engineering cost of WSL2 is minuscule compared to WSL1, especially once it is done. WSL1 would require continuous reimplementation of complex Linux kernel features as Windows syscalls.