Ok replying to my super old thread now because I hadn't been checking my inbox. I thought it would be clear that I'm referring to WSL, not the actual windows kernel. It's tightly integrated enough that you effectively have the windows gui with a Linux shell running the distro of your choice, which is able to access all your windows files, compile and run services for development etc. IMO it's a MUCH nicer experience than OSX precisely because it's actual gnu+Linux instead of the crusty bsd stuff that comes with OSX.

Anyway apologies for the confusion.