Make it possible to customize a distro's name at install-time

[nrclark]

There are times when I'd like to have multiple instances of a distro installed at the same time. As an example, I might want to have two separate copies of Ubuntu installed as independent VMs. At time of writing, this isn't possible because I can't customize the installed name of a distribution.

Current behavior:

> wsl --install -d Ubuntu
(installs ubuntu, with the end result called "Ubuntu")

> wsl --install -d Ubuntu
(fails to install)

Desired behavior:

> wsl --install -d Ubuntu
(installs ubuntu, with the end result called "Ubuntu")

> wsl --install -d Ubuntu -n custom_name
(installs a second ubuntu, with the end result called "custom_name". The other install is not modifed.)

[github-actions[bot]]

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View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Open similar issues:

• Ability to specify the name during installation (#9210), similarity score: 0.86
• Install clean copy of distro under new name (#11266), similarity score: 0.81
• Install more than one instance of a distribution (#11116), similarity score: 0.81
• Ability to install multiple instances of a distro with wsl --install <distro> <instance_name> <location> --version 1/2 (#6883), similarity score: 0.76
• New feature to set alias when I'm installing a new distro like a "--alias" param (#10090), similarity score: 0.75

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[nrclark]

/feature

[github-actions[bot]]

Diagnostic information

``` Found '/feature', adding tag 'feature' ```

[sirredbeard]

The current workaround would be to install a Ubuntu rootfs with wsl.exe --import which allows you to provide a custom name. Canonical publishes those here.