Wsl: Needs some documentation of how to install duplicates of distros

[henrik-jensen]

When using VMs it's usually easy to just install a base distro and then "fork" that same distro into several branches, (e.g. "base 'DistroName 123 LTS' vm", "WebDevStack vm based on base", "Wild experiment 1 based on WebDevStack", "Wild experiment 2 ... etc.).

How is that accomplished with wsl? The Windows Store does not give a possibility to install a new copy of a distro if you've already installed it, just gives the opportunity to start the distro.

Note:
I did find a 3rd party tool, LxRunOffline, claiming to do this, but I would prefer there was some 1st party documentation and tools to accomplish this. (Found through this SO question which also presents another method citing WSL-DistroLauncher)

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Document Details

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• ID: f2668f02-b96f-7f16-6fc5-950a1e5f86b9
• Version Independent ID: 75f3a2fb-99bd-0161-28ba-5c86e917f4d5
• Content: Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on on Windows 10
• Content Source: WSL/install-win10.md
• Service: windows-subsystem-for-linux
• Product: windows-subsystem-for-linux
• GitHub Login: @taraj
• Microsoft Alias: taraj

[craigloewen-msft]

This is now possible using wsl --import and wsl --export!

You can find my personal instructions on setting this up here: https://craigloewen-msft.github.io/WSLTipsAndTricks/tip/duplicate-distro.html

[henrik-jensen]

@craigloewen-msft 👍
Yeah,- thanks,- import/export has really been an excellent addition to wsl. Here is a lot of 👍 👍 👍 and a 🥇 to you devs from me.