Run X applications on the Linux subsystem
The Linux subsystem on Windows is an awesome piece of software. I’d been using Cygwin for years, and this completely replaced it in my daily dev-life.
However, it’s sometimes useful to be able to run apps with a GUI. My latest need was to install the Android Studio, if only for the SDK manager. I discovered that you can indeed run an X server on your Windows machine, which made me wonder: could I actually run KDE or XFCE on Windows??
You totally can!
Moreover, the thing is actually usable and seems to perform reasonably well! Even though it’s not widely mentioned as a supported thing, this blew my mind as per how much the whole “Windows Linux” is actually becoming a reality.
There still are some warning, since I don’t have a sound server running - but it’s working!
Prerequisites
Install the Linux subsystem on your computer.
Steps
- Install an X server. I settled for Xming.
- Setup your
DISPLAY
environment variable to use:0
. (addexport DISPLAY=:0
into your.bashrc
) - Install whatever you want. Say, xfce, go
sudo apt-get install xfce4
. - Start your X server (If you have issues with the windowed option, try restarting Xming with full screen).
- Start xfce (
startxfce4
) from your subsystem terminal - Smile!