WSL2 GUI not working

Question

I am trying to get GUIs working with WSL2, but nothing I tried works.

1. I turned off the Firewall for home networks (just for testing).
2. I started Vcxsrv with the following options: Multiple Windows, Display Number: -1, Start no client, Clipboard (with Primary Selection), Native OpenGL and Disable access control.
3. In Ubuntu, I entered: export DISPLAY=$(awk '/nameserver / {print $2; exit}' /etc/resolv.conf 2>/dev/null):0
4. Then I also entered: export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

After having done that, I tried to execute some programs that used to work under WSL1.

In the case of nemo, I get the following error:

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Could not parse arguments: Cannot open display:

When trying to run gedit, I get the following error:

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

(gedit:6704): Gtk-WARNING **: 01:07:05.762: cannot open display: 172.19.64.1:0

Entering echo $DISPLAY yields the following output: 172.19.64.1:0

I have also uninstalled Ubuntu, manually deleted the remnants from AppData and made a clean reinstall of Ubuntu. In case that is important: I did not create a UNIX account but use root (both before and after reinstalling Ubuntu so there should be no permission issues on the Ubuntu side).

EDIT 1: I also tried to run both Vcxsrv and Ubuntu as administrator, just to rule out any permission problems on the Windows side of things.

I probably should also add, that I am a Windows Insider (fast ring) and that I have this problem ever since I first tried WSL2 about half a year ago. Forcing me to always downgrade to WSL1 since browsing files without Nemo using just the terminal is a real pain in the ... .

Answer 1

To answer my own question in case someone has a similar problem. If I use something like this:

export DISPLAY=$(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | awk '{print $2}'):0

Running GUI programs simply won't work as they do not seem to find the Xserver (I tried two of them). However, if I manually set the IP address to

export DISPLAY=IPv4_address_of_host:0

it works flawlessly.

I honestly do not know why the first approach seems to work for many if not most people but not for me. But I tried it on three different physical machines and the first approach worked on neither. And neither did any variant of that code I could find on the Internet. I must be a very unlucky man :(.

Anyways, if you have the same problem as me, you should tell your router to always assign the same IP-address to your PC. That way, you can tell your WSL distribution that it should always use the same IP-address which enables you to automate the export DISPLAY=IPv4_address_of_host:0 step.

Answer 2

As per wiki WSL - Ubuntu Wiki you can do the following:

 export DISPLAY=$(awk '/nameserver / {print $2; exit}' /etc/resolv.conf 2>/dev/null):0 # in WSL 2
 export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

Answer 3

I know this thread is a few months old at this point, but in case this helps anyone, the Windows Firewall seems to be preventing WSL to find the X server in my case as well. When I disable my firewall, everything works. I'm looking into what would need to be added to the firewall inbound/outbound rules so the firewall doesn't need to be disabled entirely.

I hope this helps someone!

Answer 4

I had troubles with zsh and adding the two following lines to .zprofile solved the issue:

export DISPLAY=$(ip route show default | grep -ioP '\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+'):0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

I use VcXsrv on my Windows host.

Answer 5

In my case it wasn't the WSL side, it was xServer side... the message says

Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

On xServer settings, there's a check of accept all incomming connections and that made it work for me.

Answer 6

the above did not work for me but the following worked . the ubuntu destkop installation can be skipped https://medium.com/@japheth.yates/the-complete-wsl2-gui-setup-2582828f4577