It's good. But if/when you start using it as your main work platform nagging issues start cropping up. The native linux filesystem inside it cannot actually reclaim space. This isn't very noticeable if you aren't doing intensive things in it, or if you are using it as a throwaway test bed. But if you are really using it, you have to do things like zero out a bunch of space on the WSL disk and then compact it from outside in the Windows OS. Using space from your NTFS partition / drive isn't very usable, the performance is horrible and you can't do things like put your docker graph root in there as it is incompatible. It also doesn't respect capitalization or permissions and I've had to troubleshoot very subtle bugs because of that. Another issue is raw network and device access, it basically isn't possible. Some of these things are likely beyond the intended use of WSL2, in its defense. Just be aware before you start heavily investing your workflow in it. For these use cases a traditional dual boot will work far better and save you much frustration.
But VMware still excels at running desktop Linux on Windows. Especially for distros that use 3D accelerated desktops (aka literally anything that uses a recent GNOME or KDE release).
One thing that I notice nobody mention about VMWare on Windows is what about the issues with "Virtualization Based Security"? If you have this enabled VMWare uses "Windows Hypervisor Platform" which I think is also tied in with Hyper-V for running VMs through VMware making them noticeably worse and more unstable especially when dealing with USB devices. During the installer, you'll be warned of this too if memory serves correct. Cons are you cannot use WSL2 and reduced security. How much in reality does it reduce security I'm not exactly sure but I wish it wasn't like this or there was a better workaround for VMware on Windows. VBS feature is enabled by default on all Windows 11 and I think most later releases of Windows 10.
The Windows Hypervisor does suck in terms of an actual virtualization features, but it does reduce security significantly by disabling it. It’s a big front line defense against memory attacks.
It's good. But if/when you start using it as your main work platform nagging issues start cropping up. The native linux filesystem inside it cannot actually reclaim space. This isn't very noticeable if you aren't doing intensive things in it, or if you are using it as a throwaway test bed. But if you are really using it, you have to do things like zero out a bunch of space on the WSL disk and then compact it from outside in the Windows OS. Using space from your NTFS partition / drive isn't very usable, the performance is horrible and you can't do things like put your docker graph root in there as it is incompatible. It also doesn't respect capitalization or permissions and I've had to troubleshoot very subtle bugs because of that. Another issue is raw network and device access, it basically isn't possible. Some of these things are likely beyond the intended use of WSL2, in its defense. Just be aware before you start heavily investing your workflow in it. For these use cases a traditional dual boot will work far better and save you much frustration.