For me, it comes down to the fact that WSL1 apps were ran like native apps. That was amazing. It meant I could kill a WSL1 app from task manager. It meant that those apps were only taking the memory they used, not an entire VM's worth of memory. It meant I didn't have to manage yet another virtual machine environment on my PC.

WSL2 is certainly the way to go if you want a more "true" linux experience. I just lament the fact that WSL1 came so close to being true enough.