Distro management

Move a WSL distro

I prefer to have my WSL distro on a separate drive to keep my system drive small. If you want to do the same, you can move your distro as follows:

  1. Create the target folder

    I use e.g. G:\WSL\Ubuntu-24.04 as target

  2. Shutdown WSL:

    wsl --shutdown

  3. Move the distro by issuing the command:

    wsl --manage <DISTRO> --move <ZIEL>

If you do this directly after installing the WSL distro, it only takes a few seconds. You will now find a file named ext4.vhdx in the target directory.

You can continue working with WSL immediately; a restart of Windows is not necessary.

List installed distros

You can display the installed WSL distributions and their respective versions with:

wsl --list -v

Set standard distro

You can set your default WSL distro with (use the distro name from the list that the previous command generated):

wsl --set-default <DISTRO>