
Many companies offer free versions of type 2 hypervisors that run great on Windows systems. WSL is great tool, but if you need all the power and features of a Linux system, it would be better to run your Linux instance on a VM instead. Running a virtual machine (VM) can be more efficient. If your application or workflow needs to meet specific service-level agreements, don't run it on WSL. Microsoft did not design or build WSL for production workloads.

While my previous column was focused on outlining the benefits of WSL, this month I take an opposite look and outline five reasons for not running WSL. But just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

In my column last month, I discussed reasons why you should use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which allows you to run Linux distributions on Windows 10 and Windows 2016 systems.
