Thanks for your thoughts on WSL & the new Terminal.
Re. release mechanisms, etc: Terminal will be delivered via the Store so we can ship out-of-band.
We're aiming to deliver new Terminal preview builds every 2 weeks or so which, since we're delivering via the Store, will auto-upgrade everyone soon after each release.
Re. Insiders: We do NOT gather any personally identifiable information. We only collect anonymized statistics about some of the features you use and/or issues you experience. Why? To ensure that we can find and fix issues as effectively as possible.
For example, with WSL, we collect the number of times an un-implemented syscall is called, or # of times a syscall returns an unexpected error. We couldn't care less WHO experiences these issues, only how OFTEN they occur. This info (esp. combined with bug reports in our repo, etc.) has been essential in helping us prioritize which syscalls are being called, which we've implemented, which are failing, and thus, which we need to pay attention to. Without this info, we wouldn't have been able to make WSL as good as it is.
We understand the community's concern about data collection - heck, EVERYONE should be - but in the general scheme of things, I think it fair to say that Microsoft's telemetry data collection is pretty well contained and is not egregious.
If you'd like to see what telemetry is being collected, on your machines, this may be of help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-...
HTH.