How would you go about cloning a WSL distro?

Export and Import under different name ↓

https://superuser.com/questions/1589877/how-do-you-clone-a-wsl-distro

From powershell

wsl.exe --export OriginalDistributionName FileName
wsl.exe --import ClonedDistributionName InstallLocation FileName
wsl --distribution ClonedDistributionName

setup a default user if the new instance starts with root ↓

https://superuser.com/questions/1566022/how-to-set-default-user-for-manually-installed-wsl-distro

Create

/etc/wsl.conf

with

[user]
default=username

restart wsl

wsl --shutdown