ladybird/Documentation/NotesOnWSL.md

Notes on WSL

SerenityOS can also be built and run under WSL Version 2. WSL Version 1 is not supported since Version 1 does not support ext2, which is needed for the setup.

WSL Version 2 is currently only available for Insider Builds of Windows which are more unstable and prone to crashes. Therefore, running SerenityOS on WSL Version 2 and running Insider Builds, in general, is not recommended on production systems.

Nevertheless, here is a guide on how to get an Insider Build and how to get WSL2. Once installed, you will need to make sure the distribution you want to use (and the new default) is using Version 2:

• wsl -l -v will list distros and versions,
  
• wsl --set-version <distro> <version is used to convert a distro to another version, and
  
• wsl --set-default-version 2 will set the default version for all new distros (if desired.)
  

The installation then proceeds as usual.

WSL2 does not natively support graphical applications. This means that to actually ./run SerenityOS, you need an X Server for windows. Vcxsrv is a good option. When you start up Vcxsrv, make sure to set the Display number to 0, and to Disable access control. Before actually doing ./run, you need to set the DISPLAY environmental variable as such:

export DISPLAY=$(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | awk '{print $2}'):0

This is due to a bug in WSL2. For more information, microsoft/WSL#4106.

Now you can finally, ./run.