WSL: QT application fails to start

Question

I have compiled a simple QT Quick application (using Ruby-Qml, but I don't think this matters) on Ubuntu (18.04) via WSL on Windows 10 v1903 and get the following error when launching with Xming.

QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-xxxx'
failed to get the current screen resources
WARNING: Application calling GLX 1.3 function "glXCreatePbuffer" when GLX 1.3 is not supported!  This is an application bug!
QGLXContext: Failed to create dummy context

Any ideas how to resolve this?

Answer 1

For those still on Windows 10 v1903:

• Change from xming to vcxsrv
• If on a HighDPI screen change compatibility settings to let the application handle DPI scaling.
• Start vcxsrv without support for OpenGL indirection (-nowgl) and ensure that LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT is unset (export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=)

Answer 2

I have compiled a simple QT Quick application (using Ruby-Qml, but I don't think this matters) on Ubuntu (18.04) via WSL on Windows 10 v1903 and get the following error when launching with Xming.

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

The original version of WSL was not designed to run applications with a graphical UI. There are ways around this by remoting into the instance with say Xming, but those solutions, don't always work as you have found.

The simplest solution is to migrate to a WSL 2 instance, Windows 10 version 1909 is the first version that supports WSL 2, which run an actual Linux kernel.

The simplest solution would be to upgrade to Windows 10 version 1909 since it's considered a cumulative update to Windows 10 version 1903, it should be just as stable as Windows 10 version 1903.

Yes; While Windows 10 version 1909 is a feature update, it is running the same build (except incremented by 1) as Windows 10 version 1903.