You have no idea what you are talking about. You can install any kind of distribution by copying over their rootfs. For example, I am running Void Linux on WSL2.
Yes sure it can, create a usable (chrootable) Linux From Scratch rootfs tarball and import it using wsl --import, and everything should be fine. Though don't forget to remove the kernels because WSL don't load them, instead WSL uses a custom kernel shipped with the Windows system.
One of the most frustrating thing is that WSL is not a booted Linux. Systemd and other things don't work out of the box even in WSL2. In WSL1 it is almost impossible to make Systemd work, and in WSL2 a wrapper is needed to create a SUID 1 (if I am not wrong) environment to emulate a booted environment. Other than this, the kernel used by WSL2 is a custom, Microsoft-tailored LTS version which may cause some problems if some program rely on very new syscalls.
People are voting me down but it’s mostly from misinformation. WSL runs standard Linux distributions, it’s the real deal, not an imitation or anything that could be considered bad. If you face issues with it it’s mostly because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the setup (for example the person trying to run systemd…), not because it isn’t a „real Linux“.
That's exactly what I mean by misinformed. WSL 2 isn't using a simple virtual machine the way it is generally understood. It is instead using a lightweight VM using Hyper-V, there is no booting time. IO in itself isn't slow if you move files to the Linux FS. What is slow is the communication between Windows <—> Linux filesystems.
I know and I was referring to the windows <--> wsl IO
It's nice to be able to run Linux in windows but it's like driving a Ferrari inside a Honda. You do it because its nicer than context switching when you have to drive the Honda, not because it's like driving an actual Ferrari
Any virtualization solution has the complexity of the sum of the environments being run simultaneously, the virtualization solution, and the surface where all 3 interact. Furthermore the guest solution inherently deals with the system at a higher level wherein you are stuck with how the host handles lower level aspects.
Such a system is simultaneously worse and more complicated as a necessary price for running both native windows applications and linux ones. In most cases you would be better off just running Windows or running actual Linux.
For example my Linux system has a ZFS root filesystem which provides a lot of interesting features including the ability to boot a prior version of my install at startup, along with 37 other useful things. Running a linux VM with that feature wouldn't magically port this functionality to the rest of the system.
My Linux system is vastly less likely to fall victim to a cryptolocker or other malware situation but running a vm under my Windows desktop wouldn't deliver this benefit.
My Linux system handles virtual desktops per monitor making it easy to swap one monitor at a time to a different workspace or all together if I please. Again neither running an app via a compatibility layer nor a fullscreen VM would provide this functionality.
WSL is Linux light without most of the interesting features and able to be withdrawn any given year by Microsoft. Worse it could be extended in ways that depend on windows features in a classic Microsoft move.
WSL runs a standard Linux side by side with windows. There are no “Windows part” overlapping with it. A way to think about it is that you have two system that share devices and file systems.
