Both VirtualBox and VMWare Workstation are type 2 hypervisors i.e. hosted hypervisors. This means they run on top of Windows for the most part. WSL 2 runs on Hy

Both VirtualBox and VMWare Workstation are type 2 hypervisors i.e. hosted hypervisors. This means they run on top of Windows for the most part. WSL 2 runs on Hyper-V, which is a type 1 hypervisor and therefore tends to be much more performant in practice. The integration with Windows is also much better, and the startup times are so fast it can be hard to believe it's a VM. So I wouldn't necessarily call it "just a VM".