I think the biggest advantage of WSL2 is being off the radar - corporate IT support will just be "oh its a Microsoft product, install approved, add to whitelist

I think the biggest advantage of WSL2 is being off the radar - corporate IT support will just be "oh its a Microsoft product, install approved, add to whitelist in all security monitoring products". Rolling your own implementation with vmware poses the exact same security and compliance risks, but its way more likely to put a spotlight on you.