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Run Linux GUI apps on Windows 10

David J Eddy on October 23, 2018

A Little Background As much as I would like to ignore Windows in the tech world, it can not be marginalized. To many users with to many applicatio...

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Ahmed Şeref • Nov 2 '18 • Edited

This a really cool post. I think that WSL has limitations and GUI apps one one these.

Some apps need dbus like (gnome-terminal).

You should install and start the service.

sudo apt-get install dbus-x11
sudo service dbus start

see: github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/2016

David J Eddy • Nov 2 '18

This is very true. WSL does not (yet) have DBus support. Give ti time though, Windows will become more Linux like and Linux (maybe) will get a nice UI and New User Experience. At least, one can hope. :)

Ahmed Şeref • Nov 2 '18 • Edited

Successully run gnome-terminal. Trying to run visual studio code :)

Annnnd, mission completed.

# download vscode deb package.

sudo dpkg -i vscode-1.28.2.deb
sudo apt install 
sudo apt install --fix-broken libgconf-2-4 gconf2-common gconf-service gconf-service-backend libxss1 libdbus-glib-1-2 libasound2

# the hack is taken from: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3451#issuecomment-217716116
sudo sed -i 's/BIG-REQUESTS/_IG-REQUESTS/' /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1

David J Eddy • Nov 2 '18

Nice! Are you able to run other DBus dependant applications with the same process?

Ahmed Şeref • Nov 2 '18

Yes! Started Firefox but I do not know if it is DBus dependent.

RupankarGhosh • Oct 24 '18

In my opinion Windows 10 is getting better with WSL . Now it's out of beta and many network tools in WSL is working fine now. But still I am having some socket problems while on Kali Linux. The only thing I would like to see from windows in this strategy is to create a seperate folder in C:\ drive for its Linux subsystem (which atleast make any sense). 👨🏻‍💻💜🐧