WSLg - Graphical Apps on Windows Subsystem for Linux

Windows Subsystem for Linux supports displaying graphical Linux apps, it implements this via transparent RDP which forwards the visuals to Windows.

WSLg is supported in Windows 10 & Windows 11.

No special graphics drivers are required on either Windows or WSL.

OpenGL accelerated rendering is supported in Mesa 21.0. Ubuntu 22.04 includes Mesa 22.0.

Sound provided by PulseAudio.

Setup

Configure WSL to boot with systemd, this is a dependency on many graphical apps.

[boot]
systemd=true

Shutdown WSL fully by running this command in a cmd.exe window:

wsl.exe --shutdown

You will notice WSL takes longer to startup with this change, this is to be expected since the environment now includes a full systemd init system and services.

Open WSL and install snapd:

sudo apt install -y snapd
sudo snap refresh

Install Google Chrome:

# Google Chrome, 
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb -P /tmp/
sudo apt install /tmp/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -f

Install Firefox:

# this transitional package uses Snap under the covers
sudo apt install -y firefox

Shortcuts

For convinience you can create Windows shortcuts to launch graphical WSL apps, create a file called wsl-google-chrome.bat:

@echo off

wsl.exe -e google-chrome

There are techniques to hide the resulting cmd.exe window but I don’t find them worth implementing.

Setup#

Shortcuts#

Setup

Shortcuts