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According to the announcement:

WSL 2 uses the latest and greatest in virtualization technology to run its Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility virtual machine (VM). However, WSL 2 will NOT be a traditional VM experience.

It doesn't exactly clarify how is it different from traditional VM, and how it manages to be faster than WSL (which doesn't not use VM at all). In my general experience, no matter how fast a VM is, it's always slower than native.

Looking for a bit technical answer which can explain how WSL 2 manages to offer better performance than WSL and a Virtual Machine.

gronostaj
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  • Actually, for the last few years many Intel CPUs come with VT-x and related features, which enables virtualization with performance comparable to native code. AMD has similar solutions too. – gronostaj Sep 21 '19 at 14:44
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    The question is valid but it is too broad and is not fully understood by normal users. Because everything (99%) is undocumented. The only thing I know is this https://twitter.com/WindowsDocs/status/1138824765295267842/video/1. WSL2 is in Krypton section. – Biswapriyo Sep 21 '19 at 14:48
  • The next couple of sentences in the quoted paragraph literal explain the differences. *I suspect you are getting hung up on engineer lingo.* All you really have to know is that WSL 2 is going to use a hypervisor to run the Linux kernel. – Ramhound Sep 21 '19 at 16:39
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    I have exactly the same question 8 months later but still can't find any reference to what a Hyper-V "lightweight utility virtual machine" actually is, other than a normal VM sprinkled with pixie dust to make it "better". Comparisons with WSL 1 (Ramshound, Microsoft marketing) are irrelevant for this question. – Bambam Jun 01 '20 at 07:40

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