wsl-distrod VS GWSL-Source

Systemd works even in the non-store Windows 10 using https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod

In case you're using an older version of WSL that doesn't support systemd, you can give Distrod a try.

It uses snapd (so in turn, systemd) so maybe that's what you missed. Up until the WSL update that brought systemd support I've been using distrod to have systemd in my WSL2 distros so it went all smoothly for me.

I use distrod to get a wsl instance of Arch running. It's nice to have (some) systemd functionality with it ;)

You don't need Docker Desktop to install Linux distros as your WSL2 systems. For Arch there's https://github.com/yuk7/ArchWSL and if you want systemd too then use this one instead https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod/ (not specific to just Arch). Also any OCI compliant rootfs tarball goes really, you can use Docker or Podman to export images as tarballs & import them as WSL distros and vice versa. Just telling in case all you want is a distro and not a container engine like Docker running.

You can install the snap version if you have snap running (duh) so, I recommend you to either add systemd to your Ubuntu or make a new Ubuntu installation, both with this one: https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod/.

Not sure on the specifics for why it won’t install for you, but I’d recommend trying a tool called distrod regardless. You can get Ubuntu Jammy with it and it makes the distro support systemd.

Install the resolvconf package and write the nameserver etc lines into /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base file instead (or depending on your needs, use systemd by using a tool like Distrod and edit /etc/systemd/resolved.conf instead).

I used Distrod tool to install WSL that has extra features like systemd, auto-start and port forwarding ability.

https://github.com/nullpo-head/wsl-distrod I use this at work with Gentoo and it's worked fine.

That vsock thing can be done with GWSL/VcXsrv too. Check this out: https://github.com/nbdd0121/wsld

Install an X server in Windows (that page mentions VcXsrv and/but I recommend GWSL which also uses VcXsrv for a little nicer experience).

and GWSL https://github.com/Opticos/GWSL-Source with settings:

With OpenInWSL, possibly using alonside GWSL.

I don't know but if all you want is a working X server and you don't need Xming specifically then give GWSL/VcXsrv a try instead.

You may instead want to use an X server and I recommend GWSL for that.

I don't feel like troubleshooting that issue any further so if all you needed was GUI app support and not necessarily GPU compute capabilities (CUDA etc) then use this: https://opticos.github.io/gwsl/.

Also, if for some reason you decide that you aren't big on the idea of Wayland yet (as in if you don't have a care for the Wayland features and/or WSLg's PCIe partitioning based direct GPU access etc) then you can opt to disable the guiApplications setting in your .wslconfig file and instead install an X server (like VcXsrv, or GWSL that uses it and provides some nice to have GUI controls etc for it) and be able to set your preferred titlebar/border via the said themes from Pling etc from within your WSL distro environments themselves (install lxappearance or GNOME Tweaks Tool to set them up).

Yeah, all of that seems to be available if you use WSL1 and pair it up with an X server (GWSL is a handy FOSS package for that and the dev's OpenInWSL app makes the integration even more seamless).