tdcosta100

Full desktop shell in WSL2 using WSLg (XWayland)

Note

If you want to use Wayland in WSLg in a simpler setup, you can try the WSLg (Wayland) tutorial.

In this tutorial, we will setup GUI in WSL2. No additional software outside WSL (like VcXsrv or GWSL) is required. You will find this tutorial very similar to the one that replaces Xorg with Xvnc. Indeed, it's pretty much the same tutorial, with some few changes.

The key component we need to install is the desktop metapackage you want (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Budgie, etc), and after that, replace the default Xorg by a script that calls Xwayland instead.

For this setup, I will use Ubuntu 24.04, and install GNOME Desktop. Unfortunately older versions of Ubuntu lack some fundamental things, so we cannot reproduce it in older versions (at least not fully). Since the key components aren't bound to Ubuntu or GNOME, you can use your favorite distro and GUI. Check the [Sample screenshot

tdcosta100

Full desktop shell in WSL2 using WSLg (Wayland)

Note

If you want a more complete experience and already tried the Xvnc tutorial, maybe you should try the WSLg (Xwayland) instead.

Warning

This is a work in progress tutorial. Things done here may break existing functionality, so be careful!

In this tutorial, we will install and use a full GNOME Desktop environment in WSL2, without any external software. The only requirement is a working WSLg installation. At the moment, the instructions are only for Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04 and 24.04) distros and GNOME, but you can request me to test other distros and desktop environments.

raphw

#!/bin/bash
set -x
set -e
if [[ -z $1 ]]; then
  echo "Specify location of Graal VM as first argument"
  exit 1
fi
$1/bin/gu install native-image
rm -rf META-INF sample sample.build_artifacts.txt Sample.* *.jar
echo "public class Sample {

tdcosta100

WSL2 with GUI using Xvnc

Note

If you want to use pure WSLg, you can try the new WSLg (XWayland) tutorial or the WSLg (Wayland) tutorial.

In this tutorial, we will setup GUI in WSL2, and access it using VNC. No additional software outside WSL (like VcXsrv) is required, except, of course, a VNC Viewer (RealVNC, TightVNC, TigerVNC, UVNC, etc, all of them might work flawlessly).

The key component we need to install is the desktop metapackage you want (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Budgie, etc) and tigervnc-standalone-server.

For this setup, I will use Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04 and 24.04 are working), and install GNOME Desktop. Since the key components aren't bound to Ubuntu or GNOME, you can use your favorite distro and GUI. Check the [Sample