It was suggested to me that I report to the list that GRASS almost fully compiles and runs under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Everything compiles except ximgview.
For those who do not know what WSL is, it is sort of a hidden VM layer addon for Windows with a custom kernel that allows Linux to run on Windows.
I am using the Ubuntu WSL Preview on Windows 11 with WSL2. This combination gives me full GUI without needing to run a separate X Server. Graphics are accelerated (nvidia, in my case). I have not had a chance to test everything, yet, but it does look promising.
On Windows 10, you will need to run a separate middleware X Server to get the GUI working until the next release of WSL.
This may eventually replace the need for MinGW for the most recent releases of Windows. I look forward to running performance benchmarks.
It's linux, but it's on my Windows desktop! It's a bit surreal.
I’ve finally had a moment to look at my build log to see what went wrong for my WSL build of ximgview.
It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. Lots of “undefined reference” to X11 functions, but nowhere else in GRASS! Turns out gcc isn’t very happy when you have “-L -lX11”… Removing the empty “-L” resolved the issue.
I’m going to cc: the list because I’m not sure how to address this.
It was suggested to me that I report to the list that GRASS almost fully compiles and runs under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Everything compiles except ximgview.
For those who do not know what WSL is, it is sort of a hidden VM layer addon for Windows with a custom kernel that allows Linux to run on Windows.
I am using the Ubuntu WSL Preview on Windows 11 with WSL2. This combination gives me full GUI without needing to run a separate X Server. Graphics are accelerated (nvidia, in my case). I have not had a chance to test everything, yet, but it does look promising.
On Windows 10, you will need to run a separate middleware X Server to get the GUI working until the next release of WSL.
This may eventually replace the need for MinGW for the most recent releases of Windows. I look forward to running performance benchmarks.
It’s linux, but it’s on my Windows desktop! It’s a bit surreal.
I use WSL2 regularly, I’m on Win11 now, and used graphic apps for years while on Win10.
I tried out the new wslg feature on Win11 last week.
First thing, I was using the Ubuntu 20.04 (the default that the Ubuntu distribution in the Microsoft Store bundles for now). Since I had a problem with a software I tried to upgrade in place a crash ubuntu distro to a newest release but then I had even more problems with graphical software. All that to say that at least make sure that Ubuntu 20.04 works.
Next, the graphical features are not installed by default (packages for UI). If you follow the steps in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps, the installation of the software will require the packages to be installed. For example, Gedit will need to install the gnome and desktop environnement packages etc. There isn’t only gnome though. Test out that you you can run some of the apps before compiling. I wonder if the configure step ignores the X11 (–with-x11) if it not present at the configure step. That being said, on win11, it is no longer limited to X11, there is the Weston Wayland compositor in the core of the architecture. https://github.com/microsoft/wslg#wslg-architecture-overview
So, once tested that wsl and gui apps works, and then configured and built GRASS, I’d like to see what error messages you have. I didn’t compile GRASS on WSL yet, I only tried on msys2’s MinGW.
Don’t forget to make sure you have the NVidia drivers updated, like in the 510+ (I think the first beta versions were before 495, but it doesn’t mean the Linux kernel is really supported before).
See also: