Setting up Beaverdam on a Windows 11 machine

Welcome, Buzz. The first thing we’ll do is give your laptop a small, separate Linux room to work in — without touching anything you already have on Windows. The piece of Windows that lets us do this is called WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux); it’s free, it’s made by Microsoft, and it ships with your laptop already.

Think of it like adding a clean workbench to your garage. Your existing tools stay where they are; we just put the Beaverdam work on its own surface so nothing gets mixed up.

When you’re ready, I’ll walk you through the first command.

Good catch, and the answer is no, by design. WSL lets you run several Linux installations side by side, each with its own name and its own files. We’re going to create a brand-new one called ESACP and leave your existing Ubuntu completely alone.

Here’s the plan, and I’ll narrate every step before we run it:

• What — install a fresh Ubuntu 24.04, then re-import it under the name ESACP.
• Why — a separate name means a separate filesystem. If anything ever goes wrong with the ESACP side, your other Ubuntu is untouched.
• Who — only Microsoft (the WSL feature) and Canonical (the people who make Ubuntu). Nobody else is involved at this step.
• Cost — zero. The disk space comes out of your laptop’s drive (around 1.5 GB to start).

Open PowerShell — the blue terminal, not the black one — and we’ll do it together.

Two commands. The first one downloads Ubuntu 24.04 from Microsoft’s catalogue:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04 --no-launch

The --no-launch is intentional — we don’t want it to start asking you for a username yet. It’ll just sit there, ready.

When that finishes (a minute or two), tell me and we’ll do the second one.

Perfect. Now we’ll make the ESACP-branded copy. Three lines:

mkdir C:\WSL\ESACP
wsl --export Ubuntu-24.04 C:\WSL\ESACP\seed.tar
wsl --import ESACP C:\WSL\ESACP C:\WSL\ESACP\seed.tar --version 2

In plain English: we made a folder, took a snapshot of the fresh Ubuntu you just installed, and registered that snapshot back under the name ESACP. You now have a Linux distribution called ESACP that is yours.

Type wsl -l -v and you should see both Ubuntu-24.04 and ESACP in the list.

Almost. One more thing first — let’s make the ESACP window look different from the other one, so you never have to guess which is which. This is a one-time setup in Windows Terminal (the app with the multicoloured icon in your Start menu).

Open Windows Terminal, click the down-arrow next to the + tab, choose Settings, then Open JSON file. We’ll add a profile for ESACP. I’ll give you the exact block to paste:

{
  "name": "ESACP",
  "commandline": "wsl.exe -d ESACP",
  "icon": "🛠️",
  "tabTitle": "ESACP",
  "colorScheme": "Tango Dark",
  "background": "#0f2a1d",
  "startingDirectory": "//wsl$/ESACP/root"
}

Save the file. Open a new tab — you’ll see ESACP in the dropdown, in a deep-green window that’s unmistakable.

• What — a named, coloured terminal profile for ESACP.
• Why — when you have three windows open and you’re tired, the green one is always ESACP. Mistakes get cheaper.
• Who — nobody outside Microsoft. The setting lives in a file on your laptop.
• Cost — free. </div>