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markuszeller/wsl-desktop.md

Last active October 7, 2019 19:15
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Run (unix) desktop apps from WSL (Ubuntu bash)
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wsl-desktop.md

WSL Desktop Apps

You can run Apps that require a desktop or a display manager in wsl.exe the Linux Sub System under Windows.

To approach this:

  • install a x11 server like xming
  • run the display server (under Windows)
  • set the environment variable export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 or better place in ~/.bashrc.
  • I recommend adding sudo apt install gitk gedit (This will install many packages)
  • run the app you like, for example gitk or gedit

The Ubuntu Desktop seems to be to heavy for mingx, so a light desktop version will work well.

  • install sudo apt install xfce4
  • run startxfce4
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