There is now a second free WSL management tool out there called WSL Dashboard, published by a developer who goes by owu on GitHub. It is open source, it has more GitHub stars than WSL UI, and it is clearly the product of real effort. I have no problem with any of that. Competition is good for users, and WSL deserves more than one good GUI.

What I do have a problem with is this notice, which appears both on wslui.com and in the WSL Dashboard README:

"This software is not distributed through the Microsoft Store. Any application listed there under the same name is unauthorized and may be counterfeit. Please do not download it to avoid potential scams."

WSL UI is on the Microsoft Store. It has been since January. So that notice is, in plain terms, telling people that the genuine, certified, earlier WSL tool is a counterfeit scam.

It isn't. And the entire claim falls apart the moment you look at the dates — all of which are public, timestamped, and independently verifiable.

What this post is, and what it isn't

This is not a "my project is better than yours" post. I'm not going to pick apart WSL Dashboard's features or pretend it's a bad piece of software. It isn't.

This is a correction of one specific, factual claim: that the version of WSL UI on the Microsoft Store is unauthorized or counterfeit. That claim is demonstrably false, and because it's aimed at a tool people trust, it's worth setting straight properly — with evidence, not adjectives.

The timeline

Every date below comes from a public record. I've linked the sources so you don't have to take my word for any of it.

You can read the full timeline at a glance in the diagram at the top of this post.

Three things that don't add up

1. The "counterfeit" came first

The notice warns people away from "any application listed [on the Microsoft Store] under the same name." But WSL UI was on the Microsoft Store on 13 January 2026 — five days before the WSL Dashboard repository even existed, and nearly four months before the counterfeit notice was written.

You cannot be a counterfeit of something that doesn't exist yet. The Microsoft Store listing is the original, published first, by a company (Octasoft Ltd) with a verifiable corporate history going back to 2008. The Store certifies the publisher identity before anything goes live — that's the whole point of the certification process I wrote about back in January.

2. They named it "WSL Dashboard" — but bought wslui.com

Here's the part I find hardest to read as an accident. The product is called WSL Dashboard. The repository is wsl-dashboard. The site title, the README, the download buttons — all say WSL Dashboard.

But the domain they registered is wslui.com — the obvious domain for a product called WSL UI. Which is my project's name, not theirs.

So the situation is: a tool that isn't called "WSL UI" registered the "WSL UI" domain, four months after WSL UI was already established, and then used that domain to tell people the real WSL UI is a counterfeit.

3. Stars aren't a time machine

WSL Dashboard currently has far more GitHub stars than WSL UI — somewhere north of 2,600 to my ~250 at the time of writing. Good for them; genuinely. Popularity is earned and theirs is growing faster than mine.

But stars don't change chronology. A more popular project that arrived second is still the project that arrived second. The dates above don't move no matter how many people star a repository.

Alternatives are welcome. Smears aren't.

I want to be completely clear, because this is the actual point of the post:

I am glad WSL Dashboard exists. More tools mean more ideas, more pressure to improve, and more choice for the people who actually use WSL every day. If you've tried both and you prefer WSL Dashboard, that's a perfectly good outcome. Use what works for you. That has never been my objection and it never will be.

My objection is narrow and specific: don't tell users that the original, certified tool is a counterfeit scam. That's not competition. It's not "marketing." It's a false statement about a real product that real people rely on, and it damages trust in WSL tooling generally — including, eventually, WSL Dashboard's own.

Compete on features. Compete on performance — WSL Dashboard's ~10MB Rust-and-Slint footprint is a genuinely nice number, and I'd happily lose users to a faster tool fair and square. Compete on anything you like. Just not on a claim the public record flatly contradicts.

For WSL UI users: how to confirm you've got the real thing

If the notice gave you a moment's doubt, here's how to verify the Microsoft Store listing yourself, without trusting me either:

• Check the publisher. On the Store listing, the publisher is Octasoft Ltd. Microsoft verifies publisher identity during certification — an "unauthorized" copy can't list itself under a certified publisher's name.
• Cross-check GitHub. The Store build and the octasoft-ltd/wsl-ui repository are the same project, by the same author, and the repo predates everything discussed here.
• Look at the dates. Everything in the table above is in a public API or registry. If anything I've said is wrong, the records will show it — please tell me and I'll correct it.

WSL UI is, and always has been, free for personal use, open source, and minimal on telemetry. None of that changed.

An open invitation

To owu: I don't want a feud, and I'm not asking you to take your tool down or stop competing. I'm asking one thing — remove the "counterfeit" notice, from both wslui.com and the README. It's untrue, the timeline proves it, and you don't need it. Your tool can stand on its own merits.

Build the better dashboard if you can. I'll keep trying to build the better WSL UI. Users win either way — which is how this is supposed to work.

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Every claim in this post is backed by a public, timestamped source. The counterfeit notice has been preserved in the Wayback Machine and remains in the WSL Dashboard git history, so this record stands regardless of any later edits.

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Originally published at https://wsl-ui.octasoft.co.uk/blog/wsl-ui-and-the-counterfeit-claim