WSL and workstations

A platform is what the OS runs inside when something outside owns part of a machine; a role says what the machine is expected to have.

WSL

Under WSL, Windows owns the kernel, the firewall, name resolution and the instance's lifetime, so Hostwarden reads them and leaves them alone. It records WSL 1 or 2, the networking mode and what runs as PID 1, gets root through wsl.exe -u root where interop allows, and judges the firewall from the Windows side.

Workstations

A Mac, a WSL instance and the machine Hostwarden runs on are inferred to be workstations and held to workstation expectations instead of the server baseline: automatic reboots off, a firewall judged by what listens, your home directory and your own tools left to you. A workstation that is offline is skipped, not reported unreachable.