Codex-cli doesn't require Linux or WSL. I've been using it on Windows all week. That said, the model seems to get confused by Powershell from time to time, but who doesn't?
You should really try it in WSL or proper Linux, the experience is vastly different. I've mostly been using Codex (non-interactively though) for a long time on Linux. I tried it out on Windows just the other day for the first time and quoting + PowerShell seems to really confuse it. It was borderline unusable for me as it spent most of the reasoning figuring out the right syntax of the tooling, on Linux there is barely anything of that.
You're right. Tried it out this morning, and it uses fewer tokens and gets the job done quicker, not wasting so much time on the Powershell nonsense. I was resisting setting up WSL because this is just a temporary workstation, but it was worth it