WSL has been really amazing for our team. All our devs are on Windows systems and are staging & production are on Linux. Having a system identical to what's going to be in prod has saved us many hours of effort.
If it's similar to my employer, we have requirements from our board to have specific software such as anti-malware and anti-ransomware, among other protections. The IT team can also better manage and support it.
And yes, I think it's a bit silly. But WSL has helped us comply with the business/security requirements while still using (IMO) better dev tools and workflows that Linux provides.
There's no shittier OS to use than a Windows system loaded to the gills with corporate rootkits and their agents. And is it actually more secure than a sanely configured Linux desktop? Those running agents kinda seem like pretty sweet targets for hackers.
Indeed, and I'm not arguing that practically speaking it's more secure. But wiping the disk and running Linux because "I know better than you" isn't going to fly in most businesses.
> we have requirements from our board to have specific software such as anti-malware and anti-ransomware, among other protections
In the past, when I worked at companies like that, you could still stick the IT garbage laptop in a drawer, and then BYOD for development work (which is what I did...)
That way, the board gets the conflict-of-interest software license slush money, and the developers can do their jobs. Win-win.
