WSL Dashboard

A modern, high-performance, and lightweight WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) instance management dashboard. Built with Rust and Slint for a premium native experience.

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I18N: 简体中文 | 繁體中文 | English | 日本語 | Français | Español | Русский | Português | Deutsch | Italiano | Türkçe | Bahasa Indonesia | हिन्दी | বাংলা

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🖼️ Screenshots

Home (Light & Dark Mode)

Add Instance & Settings

About & Collapse menu

🎬 Operation Demo

Below is a demonstration of the WSL Dashboard in action:

🚀 Key Features

• Intuitive GUI with dark mode support and smooth animations.
• One-click management for all your WSL distributions (Start, Stop, Terminate, Unregister).
• Quick access to distribution terminals, VS Code, and File Explorer.
• Real-time WSL instance status monitoring and display.
• Export and backup to .tar or compressed .tar.gz archives.
• Import and clone instances from backups or existing distributions.
• Relocate large WSL instances (VHDX migration) to other disks to save C: drive space.
• Smart distribution installation from Microsoft Store or GitHub.
• Built-in RootFS download helper for manual installs.
• Detailed insights into VHDX file location, virtual disk size, and actual disk usage.

System Requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 with WSL enabled (WSL 2 recommended).
• At least one WSL distribution installed, or permission to install new ones.
• 64-bit CPU; 4 GB RAM or more recommended for smooth multi-distro usage.

📦 Installation

Option 1: Download prebuilt binary

The easiest way to get started is to use the precompiled release:

1. Go to the GitHub Releases page.
2. Download the latest wsldashboard executable for Windows.
3. Extract (if packaged) and run wsldashboard.exe.

No installer is required; the app is a single portable binary.

Option 2: Build from source

Ensure you have the Rust toolchain (Rust 1.92+ or newer) installed.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/owu/wsl-dashboard.git
cd wsl-dashboard

Build and run:

For development:

cargo run

Optimized release build:

cargo run --release

Using the build script (recommended for producing release binaries):

The build script requires the x86_64-pc-windows-gnu toolchain.

.\build\scripts\build.ps1

🧭 Usage Overview

• Manage existing distributions: start, stop, terminate, or unregister any WSL distro from the main view.
• Open tools quickly: launch a distro in your terminal, VS Code, or File Explorer with a single click.
• Create new instances: use the Add Instance view to install from the Microsoft Store, download RootFS images, or clone existing distributions.
• Backup and restore: export distributions to .tar / .tar.gz archives and import them later or on another machine.
• Move storage location: relocate large VHDX files to a different drive to save C: drive space.
• Monitor status: keep an eye on real-time distribution status and storage usage while WSL Dashboard runs.

⚙️ Configuration & Logs

All configuration is managed through the Settings view:

• Choose the default installation directory for new WSL instances.
• Configure the log directory and log level (Error / Warn / Info / Debug / Trace).
• Pick the UI language or let it follow the system language.
• Toggle dark mode and whether the app can auto-shutdown WSL after operations.
• Configure how often the app checks for updates (daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly).

Log files are written to the configured log directory and can be attached when reporting issues.

🛠️ Tech Stack & Performance

• Core: implemented in Rust for memory safety and zero-cost abstractions.

• UI framework: Slint, a modern GPU-accelerated UI toolkit (backend: winit).

• Async runtime: Tokio for highly concurrent, non-blocking system commands and I/O.

• Performance:

• Memory usage: typically around 60–80 MB of RAM.

• Responsiveness: near-instant startup and real-time WSL status updates using streaming.

• Binary size: optimized release build produces a single compact executable.

🌍 Language Support

Full internationalization support is provided for the following languages:

Language	Code	Emoji
English	en	🇺🇸
Simplified Chinese	zh-CN	🇨🇳
Traditional Chinese	zh-TW	🇭🇰 / 🇹🇼
Japanese	ja	🇯🇵
French	fr	🇫🇷
Spanish	es	🇪🇸
Russian	ru	🇷🇺
Portuguese	pt	🇵🇹
German	de	🇩🇪
Italian	it	🇮🇹
Turkish	tr	🇹🇷
Indonesian	id	🇮🇩
Hindi	hi	🇮🇳
Bengali	bn	🇧🇩

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 – see the LICENSE file for details.

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Built with ❤️ for the WSL Community.