I mainly work with JavaScript, React, and Node for professional work and personal projects, but over the last few months I’ve been working to add Java to my tech stack as well. A couple of weeks ago, I began working with GUI programs in Java, and when experimenting with some code in my WSL environment, I kept getting runtime errors that were specifically tied to Java GUI classes. I soon found out that GUI applications were not supported in WSL (or WSL 2, which is what you should be on anyways if using WSL). Bummer. Given a few more days, I probably would have installed Windows X Server or a similar program to support my needs to get these applications running, but as of the latest Windows Insider release, this is no longer required!

#linux #gui #windows subsystem