What's the difference between Remote Development WSL and opening a project inside WSL directly?

Question

What's the difference between Remote Development WSL and opening a project inside WSL directly?

Answer

File | Open is native WSL support: IDE running on Windows, copies a small agent into the WSL machine, and processes file system operations through it. The project behaves like a local one and keeps your usual settings and plugins. This page describes it:

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/how-to-use-wsl-development-environment-in-product.html#open-a-project-in-wsl

Remote Development | WSL installs a full IDE backend inside the distribution and connects an IDE frontend to it. The backend is a separate IDE instance that does all the heavy lifting inside WSL. IDE frontend and IDE backend are connected similarly to how it works for remote development, excluding SSH. More on that here:

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/remote-development-a.html#run_in_wsl