The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a way of running a Linux distribution efficiently as your own user, on Windows. (No dual-boot or Virtual Machine (VM) needed. It seems to be more like a container?)

While WSL1 seemed to “just” emulate the Linux syscalls on a Windows NT kernel (so there specifically was no “Linux” running at all), WSL2 seems to “fix” this by running a full-blown Linux kernel .. alongside Windows, via its own Hyper-V hypervisor.

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config#set-wsl-launch-settings - WSL (1 &) 2 configuration file(s); “8 second rule”, “systemd support”, …
• https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/chmod-chown-wsl-improvements/ from 2018 - WSL and meta-data on the Windows/Linux side…