Open GUI apps on Windows Subsystem for Linux (and on Raspberry Pi)

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is great for command line programs, but how do you run a program with a graphical user interface (GUI)? Can you start a program like Firefox or LibreOffice on WSL (or on a Raspberry Pi) and see it on your Windows desktop? Yes you can, by using VcXsrv. Let me explain.

#garyexplains

[yksw]

I am 20 years working with Linux and it's the first time I see this happening! Very nice tutorial!

[bobblum]

Good to see an updated explanation of X11. I remember back in the '90s using NetManage Chameleon for X-windows on a 233 MHz Win95 OSR2 PC at home over a 33.6K modem, supporting OpenVMS VAXes and Unix systems. It took forever to bring up the tape library and PRISM LPS printer management GUIs, but once they were up it had reasonable performance. Let me do things easier than on the command line, but I still had VT terminal sessions for DCL commands.

[Viking]

I have always wanted a tutorial on how to do this. I'm sure I could have learned how years ago, but I'm going to give this a go now! Thanks for the explanation Gary, I really appreciate it!

[philipthatcher]

Really great, clear, & concise tutorial. Also loved the brief historical context summary.

[harikrishnanprabhakaran]

This is just magic ✨ Thanks Gary for thorough and concise explanation of the technology.

[kbhasi]

10:02 By the way, Termius is also available for Windows. Additionally, you could go into Windows Optional Features and install "OpenSSH Client", which is the exact same SSH client provided on most Linux distributions, so you can open the regular Command Prompt and type "ssh" in there.

[gabormiklay]

you have great content, i always watch it, no matter how much i know about the topic, there are always things to learn.

so, yes please do a video about those IP addresses.

thx

[smile]

This is fascinating. I didn’t know this was possible.

[davidprice]

Very useful, thanks Gary. Have been using VirtualBox for a while but decided to move to containers and WSL 2 to hopefully streamline things and this approach simplifies things. I had been using PuTTY but never tried the X11 capabilities before - this gives a common way to access gui apps across all the environments.

[mcooper]

just subscribed as I find your explanations of things I have been trying to do so easy to follow, good entertaining and informative video, looking forward to YOU

[also_al]

This tutorial really helped me understand a topic I'm new to. Thanks very much!

[mannkeithc]

Excellent video. Thank you. I remember DEC PDP-11, VAX and ULTRIX machines, DECnet, migration to Sun SPARC Servers, TCP/IP etc. We used to have main & backup data centres full of them pumping out real-time data to the Finance community via our resilient global network.

[ganymedeshortride]

Great stuff Gary! I'm excited too. :) Thank you for helping.

[horizonq]

Very cool
Please don’t delete this video.
I added it to my Raspberry Pi playlist for future use

[theodoros_]

I already knew about X11 forwarding on Linux systems, but I've never thought of doing that on the WSL to get GUI apps to run. Thanks, Gary!

[BrutusPalmeira]

Now that I didn't know.... I was wondering about SSHing into the subsystem, but this takes it to another level.... thanks!

[donjon]

Last time I tried to use this method I stumbled on something so nothing could be displayed. This helped, really. Thanks!

[mikkelnatas]

Excellent video! Great job explaining this, and making Linux more approachable for people! <3

[arthurs]

Thanks Gary. Youtube finally recommended quality content to me.

[yezhang]

This is the best video I watched today!