WSL 2 is just a Linux kernel inside a VM with some VMWare-like drivers for filesystem and network access.
WSL 1 made Windows an alternative implementation of the Linux kernel. Every process was a native Windows process, syscalls trapped into the Windows kernel, etc. Operations like open, read, and write ultimately operated on the NTFS volume directly, without being serialized across an IPC channel.
But this no doubt scared the bejebus out of some Microsoft executives as it would have put the final nail in the coffin of Windows as a target for back-end server development--you'd just use POSIX and Linux-specific interfaces because they'd be available everywhere, and in fact you wouldn't even need to recompile your applications.
WSL 2 is just a Linux kernel inside a VM with some VMWare-like drivers for filesystem and network access.
WSL 1 made Windows an alternative implementation of the Linux kernel. Every process was a native Windows process, syscalls trapped into the Windows kernel, etc. Operations like open, read, and write ultimately operated on the NTFS volume directly, without being serialized across an IPC channel.
But this no doubt scared the bejebus out of some Microsoft executives as it would have put the final nail in the coffin of Windows as a target for back-end server development--you'd just use POSIX and Linux-specific interfaces because they'd be available everywhere, and in fact you wouldn't even need to recompile your applications.