Concurrent installs

Install multiple distros faster.

Experimental concurrency flag

When installing multiple distros, you have the option to install them concurrently with wslp:

wslp install --experimental-concurrent Ubuntu Debian archlinux

A default limit of 3 is set for simultaneous installations. When a slot is freed up, another distro will begin installing if it is waiting.

Performance

Below are the results of two experiments.

Each experiment compared bulk install of distros using wslp with (concurrent) or without (sequential) the concurrency flag.

The speed-ups may be useful if you frequently create and teardown WSL instances.

Experiment 1: Three distros

Tested with: Ubuntu-24.04, archlinux, Debian

Mode

Run 1

Run 2

Run 3

Average

Concurrent

108.13

90.53

107.49

102

Sequential

155.25

163.66

143.49

154

Result: 34% reduction in installation time

Experiment 2: Five distros

Tested with: Ubuntu-24.04, archlinux, Debian, kali-linux, FedoraLinux-42

Mode

Run 1

Run 2

Average

Concurrent

153.83

145.67

150

Sequential

299.92

244.21

272

Result: 45% reduction in installation time

Testing approach

The following command was run in PowerShell:

Measure-Command { wslp.exe install <distro-1> <distro-2> <distro-n> --experimental-concurrent }