On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 13:54, Geoffrey Leach <geoff@hughes.net> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 08:26:15 -0500
Ranjan Maitra <maitra@email.com> wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> As someone who does not see the value of Windows (or MacOS), I wonder
> what thoughts are regarding this:
>
> https://towardsdatascience.com/dual-boot-is-dead-windows-and-linux-are-now-one-27555902a128?source=post_internal_links---------0------------------
>
>
> For me, I hope that MS does not degrade the linux experience further
> because more people will have hopped on (assuming that this will be
> true).
>
> Ranjan

An interesting concept, but it seems to be a hook into Windows and
Unbutu, neither of which do I find very appealing. Forthermore, the
user of WSL2 is then tied to whatever Microsoft decides to do --
including dumping WSL.

The way I see it, WSL2 is providing a linux environment on the Windows system a user already has while they are unable to connect to the linux servers at their work or school.   If Microsoft dumps WSL2, users who 
really need linux will look to dual boot or other VM configurations, but many of them will be put off as they have never installed an OS and are vague about the boot process, disk partitioning, etc. so 

If you are fortunate enough to escape school or enterprise requirements to use Windows, you don't need WSL2 (VM running real linux kernel, WSL1 was like cygwin+a POSIX layer on NTFS) provides a 99% complete linux command-line without installation headaches.   Many large organizations provide Windows laptops for users, and massively parallel linux systems with ssh access for users to build software and run batch processing.  WSL2 provides a terminal with bash, users find it is very like the linux systems they have been using.

Beyond Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 LTS, Windows app store has a Fedora remix, Centos 7 and 8.1, Kali Linux, Alpine, Debian, openSUSE, and SUSE Enterprise.   Some require a payment (essentially for the work needed to produce a remix/spin of free linux distros).

--
George N. White III