My Linux Desktop (which ‘resembles’ MacOS)

Setting Up the Perfect WSL Environment for Routine Use (With GUI and Audio)

5 min readFeb 2, 2021

So if you are here I’m assuming you have a good reason to use WSL, even as your daily driver. If you’re lookin for one, for me I find the seamless integration with Windows and especially VS Code pretty handy.

This post only shows how to set up GUI and Sound in WSL2, and will be followed by one telling how to achieve the desktop shown above. Instead of the common approach installing an X server on Windows I have used VNC, since I was fed up with the lag and the limitations of the former. For me window animations have been pretty smooth and so has Video playback.

I did this on ArchWSL, but I’ll try to give commands for Ubuntu/Debian-based Distros too (You can share your experience or recommendations in the comments)

GUI

Prerequisites

Firstly we need some important components, for Arch you can install gnome, and optionally gnome-extra, or any application suite that you prefer, and for the Debian Based Distros select and install components using tasksel. LightDM also needs to be installed. We also need the dotnet runtime, which Arch Users can install from the AUR. Ubuntu users need to run the following in the terminal:

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install dotnet-runtime-3.1

Setting up Systemd

WSL2 doesn’t come with Systemd so we need a workaround for that too. I used Subsystemctl on Arch, and Systemd-genie is also a good option. Both of them offer PKGBUILDS for Arch. Here are the instructions for those on Debian for installing the later:

deb_name=`curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/arkane-systems/genie/releases/latest | grep name | grep deb | cut -d '"' -f 4`
wget https://github.com/arkane-systems/genie/releases/latest/download/$deb_name
sudo dpkg -i $deb_name

Setting up VNC

You will need tigervnc-standalone-server in WSL and a VNC viewer in Windows (I used RealVNC Viewer, and I recommend you do the same, to make following this tutorial easier, but any will suffice). Once done we need to set the VNC passwords for the user and root. If you use a login manager other than LightDM the method will be different. I went with LightDM. You can do this by running vncpasswd and sudo -H vncpasswd (for LightDM) in WSL.

Next we need to replace the Xorg script with one that calls Xvnc. Be sure to back up the existing one with sudo mv /usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg_old and create a new one with sudo nano /usr/bin/Xorg , pasting the following in it (you can tweak the geometry flag in the third last line to match the resolution you want).

#!/bin/bash
for arg do
  shift
  case $arg in
    # Xvnc doesn't support vtxx argument. So we convert to ttyxx instead
    vt*)
      set -- "$@" "${arg//vt/tty}"
      ;;
    # -keeptty is not supported at all by Xvnc
    -keeptty)
      ;;
    # -novtswitch is not supported at all by Xvnc
    -novtswitch)
      ;;
    # other arguments are kept intact
    *)
      set -- "$@" "$arg"
      ;;
  esac
done

# Here you can change or add options to fit your needs
command=("/usr/bin/Xvnc" "-geometry" "1024x768" "-PasswordFile" "${HOME:-/root}/.vnc/passwd" "$@") 

systemd-cat -t /usr/bin/Xorg echo "Starting Xvnc:" "${command[@]}"

exec "${command[@]}"

Remember to mark it as an executable with sudo chmod 0755 /usr/bin/Xorg .

Starting it up

If you used Subsystemctl use the following commands to start it up

sudo Subsystemctl start
Subsystemctl shell

Otherwise for systemd-genie

genie -i > /dev/null &
genie -s

Also we need to start LightDM and enable it (so we don’t have to repeat this)

sudo systemctl start lightdm.service
sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service

Now you can head over too your VNC viewer, connect to localhost:5900 and enter the password you set for VNC (the second one), and Voila you have your GUI (although its not pretty right now, we’ll do that in another post). You can login to use Gnome (or whatever WM you installed). Also, if you’re colors are messed up you need to change the output quality in your VNC Viewer’s settings.

Sound

Setting up the Windows endpoint

Firstly you need to install pulseaudio on Windows, which you can get here. Extract it somewhere (I chose a new folder in Program Files) and make the following changes:

In etc/pulse/default.pa change #load-module module-native-protocol-tcp to load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1

in etc/pulse/daemon.conf change ; exit-idle-time = 20 to exit-idle-time = -1

Setting up the Linux endpoint

Install pulseaudio on Arch and pulseaudio-utils on Ubuntu. Add the following line to /etc/profile: export PULSE_SERVER=tcp:$(grep nameserver /etc/resolv.conf | awk ‘{print $2}’); . Also, not sure if this is necessary but, for ALSA, install libasound2-plugins on Ubuntu and add the following to /etc/asound.conf :

pcm.!default {
     type pulse
     hint.description "Default Audio Device"
}
ctl.!default {
     type pulse 
}

And thats it, refresh /etc/profile, and sound will work.

But if you’re going to use this daily, you can’t possibly go through all this every time. You should able to do this with one command, don’t you think? Here’s how:

Putting it All Together

Changes you might need to make whilst creating the files

in /usr/bin/wsound-start make sure it points to the path where your pulseaudio.exe is not mine :)
/usr/bin/startWDesktop includes the commands for starting subsystemctl, make sure to replace them with those for systemd-genie (mentioned above) if needed
Make sure to change the path (in line 4 of /usr/bin/startWdesktop) to where you store your exe (for starting the VNC Viewer).
In the ps1 file make sure to use the relevant command for your VNC Viewer.

Creating some files

Create /usr/bin/wsound-start and add /mnt/c/Program\ Files/pulseaudio/bin/pulseaudio.exe > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Create /usr/bin/startWDesktop and add the following

wsound-start
sudo subsystemctl start
sleep 2
/mnt/c/Users/waliwaqar/Documents/defender-excluded/startWSLGUI.exe
subsystemctl shell

Allow executing these files by running the following

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/wsound-start
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/startWDesktop

Creating a .EXE to Run the Viewer

(you will most probably need to place all this in a folder added as an exception in Windows Defender 😔)

Create a ps1 (PowerShell script file) with the following code:

cd 'C:\Program Files\RealVNC\VNC Viewer\'
.\vncviewer.exe -config C:\Users\waliwaqar\Documents\VNCs\arch-wsl.vnc

and convert it to a .exe (any tool of you’re choice, I downloaded one from here)

And You are now Done. Simply type startWDesktop in the terminal to get going!

A Few More Points

I used VNC because X servers (for Windows) are buggy and laggy and limit what you can do (I couldn’t go further than XFCE and the WMs used for ricing)
This setup holds up pretty nice even with lots of animations and visual tweaks and you can use any Desktop Environment (Deepin is pretty nice) you like. Video Playback is pretty nice too.
If you liked the looks of the Desktop in the Cover Picture, that is my own, and I have made a tutorial on how to recreate it here.
While setting this up myself I took help from A tutorial to use GUI in WSL2 replacing original XServer by Xvnc, allowing WSL to work like native Linux, including login screen · GitHub and How to use Rhasspy with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) — Development — Rhasspy Voice Assistant

Adios.