Erik Ferreira MetalDevOps

WSL2 with GUI using Xvnc

Note

If you want to use pure WSLg, you can try the new WSLg (XWayland) tutorial or the WSLg (Wayland) tutorial.

In this tutorial, we will setup GUI in WSL2, and access it using VNC. No additional software outside WSL (like VcXsrv) is required, except, of course, a VNC Viewer (RealVNC, TightVNC, TigerVNC, UVNC, etc, all of them might work flawlessly).

The key component we need to install is the desktop metapackage you want (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Budgie, etc) and tigervnc-standalone-server.

For this setup, I will use Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04 and 24.04 are working), and install GNOME Desktop. Since the key components aren't bound to Ubuntu or GNOME, you can use your favorite distro and GUI. Check the [Sample

Enable `systemd` in WSL 2

**NOTE: If you have Windows 11 there is now an official way to do this in WSL 2, use it if possible - see MS post here (WINDOWS 11 ONLY)**

This guide will enable systemd to run as normal under WSL 2. This will enable services like microk8s, docker and many more to just work during a WSL session. Note: this was tested on Windows 10 Build 2004, running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in WSL 2.

To enable systemd under WSL we require a tool called systemd-genie
Copy the contents of install-sg.sh to a new file /tmp/install-sg.sh:

How to download your Udemy course videos using youtube-dl

$ youtube-dl --list-extractors | grep udemy

Steps

Get link to the course to download. e.g. https://www.udemy.com/course-name/
Login into udemy website, save the cookie from chrome using Chrome (Cookie.txt)[1] export extension. Save it to file udemy-cookies.txt
Get the link of the video that you want to download. usually in format. Use the command provided below where you have to replace the {course_link} and {path_to_cookies_file} with respective paths.

$ youtube-dl {course_link} --cookies {path_to_cookies_file}

	#!/bin/bash

	ACTION="$1"

	# RClone Service Series
	RCLONE="/bin/rclone"
	CONFIG_FILE="/volume1/@rclone/config/rclone.conf"
	MOUNT_NAME="${2:-"union_series"}"
	MOUNT_POINT="${3:-"/volume1/media/series"}"
	MOUNT_CACHE_DIR="/volume1/@tmp/@${MOUNT_NAME}"

	#!/usr/bin/env python3
	__ETAG__ = '' # NOTE: replaced by update script
	__version__ = '2.0.9'
	__GIST__ = 'https://gist.githubusercontent.com/u8sand/498766e540939ca2c3550c1986deb5bd/raw/two-way-rclone.py'
	__README__ = '''
	This utility facilitates "smart" two-way-sync between two rclone stores.
	The first location is considered the "localpath" & metadata about the previous
	execution is stored in this location. This information can be used to determine
	if changes were made on the local side or on the remote side since the last run.

	using System;
	using LogDataCollector;

	namespace th_salvageupdater
	{
	class Program
	{
	static void Main(string[] args)
	{
	//Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");

	## change to your username
	$user="wsl-user"

	# download latest 20.04 release
	curl --location `
	--remote-name `
	"https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64-wsl.rootfs.tar.gz"

	# import into WSL 2
	wsl --import `

	AXIS_UP ignore
	AXIS_DOWN ignore
	AXIS_LEFT ignore
	AXIS_RIGHT ignore
	MOUSE_BTN3 add volume 5
	MOUSE_BTN4 add volume -5
	MOUSE_BTN5 seek -5
	MOUSE_BTN6 seek 5

	Use this as an example on how to start the virtual console without the need of Java Web Start or accessing it from the web interface.
	You can use the user and password that you use for the web interface.

	You need an old JRE... I used 1.7.0_80 from the Server JRE package, also I have tested successfully 1.7.0_79 with MacOS.
	You don't need to install it, just extract it or copy the files in "jre" folder.

	Open the viewer.jnlp file that you get by launching the virtual console from the web interface with a text editor.
	Note the urls to the jar files. Download the main jar file avctKVM.jar and the libs for your operating system and architecture.
	Extract the dlls (.so Linux, .jnilib MacOS) from the jar libs.

	@echo off

	:checkPrivileges
	NET FILE 1>NUL 2>NUL

	if '%errorlevel%' == '0' (
	goto mainScript
	) else (
	goto getPrivileges
	)