Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy) for WSL has a new installer (called the "Out of Box Experience" by Canonical) that provides a graphical UI to walk users through the installation. However, it is substantially slower than the older text-based install that other WSL distributions (including 20.04) use. For comparison:

• 22.04 Jammy: ~ 1 minute 30 seconds for all screens, even just accepting the defaults (other than username/password)


• 20.04 Focal: ~ 20 seconds (9 seconds + however long it takes to type your username and password twice)

This probably isn't an issue for most people, but I like to "spin up" a 22.04 (or other distribution) quickly, try something out, then throw it away with wsl --unregister Ubuntu-22.04.

Jammy's installer goes through multiple steps, only some of which seem "useful" compared to the previous installer:

• "Unpacking the distro" -- 11-12 seconds on my relatively fast NVMe drive.

  
  



• "Almost done. The installer will require your attention soon." -- ~14 seconds

  
  



• "We are almost done - Just a few steps to be completed in the main installer window. Can we quit this one and go there?"

  
  



• A language selection screen

  
  



• The username/password screen

  
  



• "Advanced Setup" where mount options can be set

  
  



• "Applying Changes" -- The biggest issue, since it takes more than 30 seconds, and says it may take longer if the network connection is slow.

  
  

  It's really not clear what's going on in this step since it shouldn't even need an internet connection to apply changes to a local WSL installation of Ubuntu.

  
  

By comparison, Focal needs only about 10 seconds to complete the first step (unpacking), at which point it is ready to accept the username/password, and then it's done.

Is there any way to speed up the Jammy OOBE/Installer, perhaps by skipping certain steps?