This is a cheat sheet for WSL.
Note
There is no UI to interact with WSL.
List all installed distros
wsl -l -v
Tip
This also lists whether the distro is currently running.
Log into distro
Log into the default distro:
wsl
Log into any other distro:
wsl -d <DistroName>
Both commands start the distro, if it’s not yet running.
Shutting down a distro
WSL automatically stops any distro if it hasn’t been used for a certain time. This timeout is 1 minute by default but can be changed via vmIdleTimeout in the .wslconfig.
If you still need to kill a distro, use:
wsl --terminate <DistroName>
To shut down WSL and all of its distros, use:
wsl --shutdown
Version and update
Show current WSL version:
wsl --version
Update to the newest WSL version:
wsl --update
Note
This will only update WSL itself but not the distros.
To update a distro, you need to log into the distro and use the distro’s own update mechanism.