Windows 10 support request

[exitdown]

seems like this is a feature request at this stage even tho it already works but hey, lets run a request thread anyway.

dear dev team,

please can you allow users who have been assisting with testing and dev of this product the entire time, to use the system in the envrionment that it already was built against and works perfectly, instead of using it as bait to force people into the new drm centric release.

please give us some evidence that you really have changed, and arent just using the same "embrace, enhance, extinguish" approach that your company always has.

this is not a feature that the majority of your customers will need, but it is a feature that by exclusion will annoy a large number of technical, engineering and technology decision makers.

im sure 99% of the staff involved in the actual creation of this project would like to see it available on windows 10 - which was previoulsy stated publicly as the last version of windows, so how about we just try upvoting a feature request, and give the good people in this team some amunition to fight this non technical, entirely political problem.

[crramirez]

... or allow PCs with older CPUs to upgrade to Windows 11. I am afraid that Microsoft can lose those developers that took too much effort and dedication to attract.

[anthr76]

I'm a corporate windows user and would love to give this a try. It's not my choice what windows version I run.

[seffyroff]

Well, way to alienate a bunch of devs who you just tempted over. Presumably there's some NT kernel dependency that lives in a Win11 feature branch. Given that the Win10 kernel is likely to continue to receive updates for several years yet, it seems like the motivation to bump this to Win11 came from a sales manager rather than an engineer.

If I'm forced to upgrade my OS in order to have Linux GUI apps again, I guess I'll pick one that doesn't have a bait and switch going on, like say, Actual Linux, or OSX..

[TimurShaidulin]

If I'm forced to upgrade my OS in order to have Linux GUI apps again, I guess I'll pick one that doesn't have a bait and switch going on, like say, Actual Linux, or OSX..

At least, you have a choice. I don't have any. My PC is not win11-compatible.
So switching to Linux is the only way to go for me if there won't be win10 wslg support.

[seffyroff]

This has a dramatic effect for me on a whole ecosystem of impressive initiatives that MS surged forward on. Windows Terminal and VSCode became my daily drivers because of WSL2, and the promise of deeper capabilities. Winget brought the Powershell CLI in parity with other platforms on convenient ways to conduct daily admin tasks that are typically laborious on Windows. I admire those teams and the work they're doing, but I'll likely drop them as their usefulness diminishes without WSL.

[jp-weber]

I am quite disappointed that besides the nested HyperV virtualization, WSLg is also not coming for windows 10. Windows 11 is unfortunately still alpha from the UI and for the power user a bitter step backwards.

[markexperience]

Complete bollox as ever from Redmond.
Spend years promoting the look how cool WSL is, then say GUI apps are coming... then the devs that were tempted over get shafted as the feature is only in Windows 11...

[markexperience]

I'm a corporate windows user and would love to give this a try. It's not my choice what windows version I run.

Well, way to alienate a bunch of devs who you just tempted over. Presumably there's some NT kernel dependency that lives in a Win11 feature branch. Given that the Win10 kernel is likely to continue to receive updates for several years yet, it seems like the motivation to bump this to Win11 came from a sales manager rather than an engineer.

If I'm forced to upgrade my OS in order to have Linux GUI apps again, I guess I'll pick one that doesn't have a bait and switch going on, like say, Actual Linux, or OSX..

You always just install a 3rd party X-Server it's not that difficult... on the other hand switch to linux as your main OS as just run Windows in a VM if you absolutely need access to its apps.

[stochmal]

definitely need WSLg to run under Windows 10 otherwise WSL is half-baked solution

[Masamune3210]

Not really, there is quite a lot you can do in Linux without a gui

[TimurShaidulin]

You always just install a 3rd party X-Server it's not that difficult... on the other hand switch to linux as your main OS as just run Windows in a VM if you absolutely need access to its apps.

wow.. nice strategy here
lets build a windows tool so our developers move to native linux. Way to go, mate :)

[Masamune3210]

Features take time to come out, would be useful until everything is ready

[markexperience]

You always just install a 3rd party X-Server it's not that difficult... on the other hand switch to linux as your main OS as just run Windows in a VM if you absolutely need access to its apps.

wow.. nice strategy here lets build a windows tool so our developers move to native linux. Way to go, mate :)

Classic case of the rule of "unintended consequences."

[zakius]

there's a lot of features supposed to ship in 10 21H2 before we first heard of 11 that were locked to 11, looks like someone in management realized how big of a downgrade changes in 11 are and wanted to make up for it somehow

[Masamune3210]

What exactly are you considering a downgrade? other than the taskbar being more limited I cant think of anything else that would be a downgrade really

[zakius]

lack of taskbar, lack of start screen in terms of productivity, and that's an absolute dealbreaker
for general experience there's also the bloated interface with paddings filling whole screen and rounded corners

[Masamune3210]

taskbar is basically the same, start menu isnt a super big deal as most people just open it long enough to open whatever they are wanting to open, interface is basically 10 with rounded corners and more paint which isn't as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. this happens literally every major windows release

[briandesousa]

Brutal, I just re-installed Windows 10 due to Windows 11 destroying productivity (taskbar, start menu, graphics grinding on a powerful GPU). Didn't realize until now that WSLg is not available to Windows 10 insiders anymore. Still won't go back to Windows 11 until I can be productive on it again.

[rwasef1830]

I tried WSLg on Windows 11 after force installing it, I ran into pretty severe usability issues with Jetbrains apps. In full screen context menus and menus in the menu bar would immediately flash close when i clicked and appear in the wrong place... And the white border is extremely irritating in dark mode (no dark mode theme in wslg), and very slow (30 seconds+) startup with no visual feedback.

Just use GWSL from Microsoft Store on Windows 10, it has some issues as well, but far less severe than WSLg.

.. There just seems to be plenty of issues on Windows 11 with non-WDDM-3.0 GPU drivers and I guess MS opted instead of optimizing for them or fixing the issues, they just decided to "unsupport" those hardware devices.

[exitdown]

#347 (comment)

looks like there is some progress happening in the background, the support request has been heard :)

[SamuelGeiger]

I'm a corporate windows user and would love to give this a try. It's not my choice what windows version I run.

Well, way to alienate a bunch of devs who you just tempted over. Presumably there's some NT kernel dependency that lives in a Win11 feature branch. Given that the Win10 kernel is likely to continue to receive updates for several years yet, it seems like the motivation to bump this to Win11 came from a sales manager rather than an engineer.
If I'm forced to upgrade my OS in order to have Linux GUI apps again, I guess I'll pick one that doesn't have a bait and switch going on, like say, Actual Linux, or OSX..

You always just install a 3rd party X-Server it's not that difficult... on the other hand switch to linux as your main OS as just run Windows in a VM if you absolutely need access to its apps.

I did install exactly that. install an x-Server on windows an running the apps in wsl2. I always have to deactivate the windows firewall on the network adapter for WSL after every reboot because it is not part of the public network. Also the integrated nameserver in WSL doesn't work correctly so I have to add a nameserver to resolve.conf. Also the scaling on ultrawide monitors is... wired. Installing a Xserver is easy. Getting into a working condition for a daily driver setup is terrible.

[crramirez]

@SamuelGeiger follow these instructions: https://x410.dev/cookbook/wsl/protecting-x410-public-access-for-wsl2-via-windows-defender-firewall/ for the firewall problem.

About the high dpi in GTK just use export GDK_SCALE=2 and for Qt VcXsrv already set the right values to xrandr but you must tell vcxsrv to be aware of HighDPI.

It is not easy but can be automated to have a good experience without WSLg

[Dakkaron]

I was so looking forward to 21H2 for WSLg. Just installed it to find out, there is nothing there. Pretty disappointed right now. Probably have to give Linux a serious go as a daily driver again...

Please just add WSLg for Win10 already!

[SamuelGeiger]

@SamuelGeiger follow these instructions: https://x410.dev/cookbook/wsl/protecting-x410-public-access-for-wsl2-via-windows-defender-firewall/ for the firewall problem.

About the high dpi in GTK just use export GDK_SCALE=2 and for Qt VcXsrv already set the right values to xrandr but you must tell vcxsrv to be aware of HighDPI.

It is not easy but can be automated to have a good experience without WSLg

@SamuelGeiger follow these instructions: https://x410.dev/cookbook/wsl/protecting-x410-public-access-for-wsl2-via-windows-defender-firewall/ for the firewall problem.

About the high dpi in GTK just use export GDK_SCALE=2 and for Qt VcXsrv already set the right values to xrandr but you must tell vcxsrv to be aware of HighDPI.

It is not easy but can be automated to have a good experience without WSLg

I am aware of this "solution" but there are two major flaws in this guide. It opens the firewall to all computers on public networks and I can't change the public profile because it is locked by a group policy from the domain controller. I use Wsl2 on a work laptop. Also one cannot even pin it to a ip since windows chooses to use a different ip for wsl on every reboot.

[a-stana]

I was hoping this would be pushed with the release of 21H2. It would benefit and facilitate my work progress immensely. I would appreciate the development towards implementing WSLg into Windows 10. Thank you in advance!

[wxie2013]

There has been just so much misinformation on the web about wlsg in 21h2 build and I'm one of the victims falling into the trap. Under the assumption something wrong with my existing wsl2 setup, I wiped them all out and re-install wsl2 from scratch and just to find out it's not enabled in this version of windows. Now I have to recover everything back to where they were.

[Biswa96]

If anyone want to play with fire I have a little volcano here https://github.com/Biswa96/initrdg

[hello-smile6]

lack of taskbar, lack of start screen in terms of productivity, and that's an absolute dealbreaker for general experience there's also the bloated interface with paddings filling whole screen and rounded corners

Win11 is literally nothing but Windows 10 with a new logo, text-align: center, and border-radius: 5%.

[zakius]

and removed taskbar, and removed start screen

[jopilote]

... I wiped them all out and re-install wsl2 from scratch and just to find out it's not >enabled in this version of windows. Now I have to recover everything back to >where they were.

been there, bought my 21H2 last month explicitly for win10 with WSL2.
Seems trying >wslg on Pshell, wont find it, so no go.

Reinstalling WSL2 (after21H2) should not be so harsh if same distro is reused: One could use a NTFS junction (link) to keep the "wsl home" in a WIN10 C:> directory? (on WIN10, WSL2 now uses virtual drive [inaccessible directly(?)] via network, so I'm not sure if junction is possible...)
The previous WSLs had access to WSL/~ in WIN/~ , but linking there was problematic (changes to WIN/~/.../wsl/, were not synced with WSL)

Reversely using a link in WSL to my WIN10 cloud code directory (in "/mnt/c" ) should definitely work, right?

[BvngeeCord]

Assuming we're still out of luck here? Really sucks. Just got down the rabbit-hole myself, turns out the internet is very good at not making it clear when things are Windows 11+. Let me know if things have changed.

[mssherrard]

Same same.

[WSLUser]

@Biswa96 It appears the latest change #824 conflicts with something in your Win10 branch. Can you see what the problem is? (I did a check and was not immediately obvious to me). I did notice the removal of Windows fonts being included and ideally we'd have both the distro and Windows fonts to choose from.

[Biswa96]

I sync changes in my Win10 branch when there is a new WSL Preview release. I think we should not discuss about that fork here. Feel free to create an discussion in my repository.

[WSLUser]

Didn't see an option, hence requesting here.

[kasper93]

FYI: WSLg is now supported and working on Windows 10 🎉

You might want to wsl --update and check it out :)

WSL version: 1.0.0.0
Kernel version: 5.15.74.2
WSLg version: 1.0.47
MSRDC version: 1.2.3575
Direct3D version: 1.606.4
DXCore version: 10.0.25131.1002-220531-1700.rs-onecore-base2-hyp
Windows version: 10.0.19045.2311

I'm on 22H2 as you can see, but not sure it matters or just new WSL is enough.

[TheGentleChainsaw]

I'm on 22H2 as you can see, but not sure it matters or just new WSL is enough.

I did actually have to update to 22H2 before I was given the new version of WSL, so I think it is tied to 22H2 after all.

[crramirez]

In my case, it didn't work, upon I receive version 1.0.0.0 of WSL all my distros say:

Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateInstance/CreateVm/ConfigureNetworking/0x8000ffff

[crramirez]

Ok I found the error, I had:

[wsl2]
kernelCommandLine = cgroup_no_v1=all

In my .wslconfig I deleted it and now it works

[Masamune3210]

I'm on 22H2 as you can see, but not sure it matters or just new WSL is enough.

I did actually have to update to 22H2 before I was given the new version of WSL, so I think it is tied to 22H2 after all.

it is, under the hood changes had to be made to Windows, WSLg is more complicated than people realize and takes a lot of moving parts all merging together just right to work correctly

[Biswa96]

Many things have not changed. The system provided WSL may not have all the wslg features.

[Croydon]

@kasper93 @TheGentleChainsaw Have you the store version of WSL? Is it possible to manually install it without losing the current distributions?

If the store version is now compatible with Win10 why isn't it installed by default? 🤔

[Biswa96]

Is it possible to manually install it without losing the current distributions?

Yes.

[BvngeeCord]

I just want to say thanks, they didn't have to add this to Windows 10. They could've moved on but they didn't, now I can fully enjoy this amazing piece of technology so thank you to the developers who made it possible :)

[WSLUser]

They absolutely had to if they wanted to keep the majority of their user base, which is why surprisingly it happened. What I want to know is if that means WSL Preview is available for win10 now?

[jtherin]

I installed through store, but:

Windows version 10.0.19045.2251 does not support the packaged version of Windows Subsystem for Linux.
For information please visit https://aka.ms/wslinstall
Press any key to continue...

[Biswa96]

@jtherin Please make sure that your machine is fully up to date. The Windows Update required is KB5020030.

[Dakkaron]

This is awesome! I really didn't expect this to happen!

Now we only need wsa and we are totally set!

@jtherin: Had the same, but you don't actually need that. You can also just wsl --update in cmd/powershell. Then reboot and wsl --version. If you see a version for wslg you are set.

[zakius]

so is there anything blocking WSLA/WSA on 10 left? after all 10 is still a way better OS for most of usecases

[exitdown]

alright well with all the happy comments i guess i can go ahead and call this closed! :)
I had a feeling if enough people made it obvious they wanted it that would give the devs the justification to implement it. either way, thanks very much! - unless someone else would like to close it ;)

[Dakkaron]

Regarding WSA, I created an issue here: microsoft/WSA#145

Upvote if you want, maybe we can get the same thing going as here.

[crramirez]

They absolutely had to if they wanted to keep the majority of their user base, which is why surprisingly it happened. What I want to know is if that means WSL Preview is available for win10 now?

Yes it is.

[IndefiniteBen]

Unfortunately the required update is not available in Windows Update for Business. For those of us with company PCs that get updates this way, you can get this working (without waiting for the next security update) by installing the update from Windows Update Catalog, as mentioned in the "How to get this update" section of the linked support page.

If you're in this situation wsl --update as mentioned by @Dakkaron will not find any updates and wsl --version will not work even if you have installed the store version.

I previously used the in-Windows version of WSL, then I got the same error as mentioned before when trying the Windows store version. Installing update KB5020030 from the catalog and restarting resulted in a correct output from wsl --version. I also had a funky $DISPLAY value which caused issues (because I used GWSL before) but that was fixed with export DISPLAY=:0 mentioned on the WSLg wiki.

Thank you to everyone in the community who kept asking for this and to those that implemented it!