Normal interactions from within WSL of course feel normal. It's just a VM with a fancy name after all. Which is removing pretty much all the overhead of the Windows I/O system, and which has hence been faster for ages. I'm surprised \\wsl$ would be faster though; that should have more overhead going through a VM, not less. If I ever try out WSL2 I'll have to give it a shot, but somehow my past experiences don't leave me optimistic...