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 u

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. Edit: regarding the custom kernel, you can create your own if you want, nothing is blocking you from doing so https://kumekay.com/compiling-custom-kernel-for-wsl2/ https://kumekay.com/compiling-custom-kernel-for-wsl2/. Microsoft's kernel is also available on github: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.