When Microsoft released Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in 2016, everyone was disappointed. Because everyone’s dream is to run Linux and Windows applications in parallel without having to reboot (booting back and forth between the two operating systems). But unfortunately, WSL can only run command line applications using Terminal.
| Join the channel Telegram of the AnonyViet 👉 Link 👈 |
If you want to install WSL on Windows 10 then you can read this paragraph.
Last year, Microsoft again began trying to revolutionize the Windows app ecosystem. This time, they replaced the old emulator kernel with the real Linux kernel. This change allows you to run Linux applications in Windows, making a user’s dream of 4 years finally come true.
Initial Demo of GUI Applications for WSL
Technically, you’ve basically got support for Linux GUI applications on WSL, but only when using a third-party X server. They are often buggy, slow, difficult to set up, and a privacy issue.
The result was a small group of Linux enthusiasts with the skills and knowledge to set up an X server. These people were then deeply disappointed by the fact that it lacked hardware acceleration. So the best option is still to use command line tools on WSL.
But all this has now changed. Microsoft is officially supporting Linux GUI applications, you’ll get hardware acceleration, along with a bunch of other improvements in WSL.
WSLg – Linux GUI Applications Support
With official support from Microsoft in WSL, many improvements have been updated such as:
- GPU Hardware Acceleration
- WSL . external microphone and audio support
- Automatically start X server and PulseAudio
And, they have nicknamed this feature “WSLg”.
These features will make running Linux applications on WSL as easy as running native applications, and with minimal performance impact.
So you can try running your favorite IDE and many other applications like CAD software.
GPU Hardware Acceleration on Linux Applications
One of the biggest problems with running Linux GUI applications on Windows is that they cannot use hardware acceleration. This makes any GPU related operations slow and difficult.
According to the announcement from Microsoft:
As part of this feature, we have also supported 3D graphics acceleration on the GPU! Thanks to the work done in Mesa 21.0, any application that is doing complex 3D rendering can take advantage of OpenGL for acceleration using the GPU on your Windows 10 machine.
This is a very useful addition and should help anyone who wants to run GPU intensive applications through WSL.
WSL external microphone and audio support
One of the key factors for a better experience with Linux applications is sound. With the new WSL update, audio is supported from the very beginning thanks to the PulseAudio server being started at the same time as the X server. This is something that anyone who uses external speakers on Linux will understand. When you turn the computer back on, Linux will use the sound of the main system, such as a Laptop, you have to switch the audio output through the external speakers.
Microsoft explains:
Linux GUI applications on WSL will also include audio and microphone support right out of the box. This will allow your app to play audio and use the microphone, great for building, testing or using movie players, telematics apps, etc.
If we want Linux applications to become more popular, this is a must-have feature. This will also allow Windows application developers to better support the porting of their applications to Linux.
Automatically start all required servers
Previously, you had to start the PulseAudio and X servers manually before you could actually run anything. Now, Microsoft has implemented a service that checks if a Linux application is running, then automatically starts the requested servers.
This makes it much easier to launch and use Linux applications on Windows.
Microsoft claims this will improve the user experience significantly:
With this feature, we will automatically start the companion system distribution, which contains the Wayland, X server, sound server, and everything else needed to make Linux GUI applications communicate with Windows . After you finish using GUI applications and end your WSL session, the system distribution will also end its session automatically.
These components work together to help run Linux GUI applications alongside regular Windows applications.
Conclusion
With all these new features, it looks like Microsoft is doing its best to get Linux apps to work on Windows. And by allowing Linux applications to run on Windows, we can see more Linux users starting to migrate to Windows. Especially since the apps they’re used to will still work just fine.
