WSL GUI Support

[cbajada]

Hi all,

Since WSL should not support GUI applications, has anyone tried mrview? I’m seriously considering running Windows on my next machine but it would seriously depend on whether mrview works on it

Claude

[suren]

Hello @cbajada ,

I have tried running mrview in windows 10 and it works well following the link below.

https://mrtrix.readthedocs.io/en/3.0_rc3/installation/windows_install.html

Suren

[cbajada]

Thanks suren,

I was hoping to get everything done through WSL rather than jumping through all of the hoops with MSYS2. Doing things with WSL will allow for FSL integration, which is not possible with the MSYS2 approach.

Claude

[suren]

Hello @cbajada ,

Yes, it’s possible. I am also using FSL/MRtrix3 through vmware/ubuntu 20.04. It works fine. Best wishes for your new installation.

Suren

[amitjc]

Hello,

Tried mrview on win-kex, a Kali Linux desktop environment in wsl2; mrview works like a charm! Haven’t installed FSL on the KALI WSL…I believe, FSL should work fine just like it does on any other WSL2 distro / native Linux distro.

Thank you.

Best,
Amit.

[rsmith]

Some existing info, always open to people contributing their own working solutions:

Installing on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Microsoft recently released the Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL), which enables you to install and run a Linux environment on Windows 10 with near-native performance. This allows Windows users to access a range of research applications that would otherwise only be available on Unix-like systems. This includes packages that some MRtrix3 scripts (dwifslpreproc, dwibiascorrect, 5ttgen, …) rely on, notably FSL and ANTs. It makes sense therefore to also install MRtrix3 within the WSL to allow these …

[cbajada]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for this. I had read Donald’s post. I’ve asked the question since (I believe) Windows have now launched WSL with GUI support, so I was wondering whether anyone has tried it. Perhaps my next computer will be Windows based

Run Linux GUI apps with WSL

Claude

[jdtournier]

Hi Claude,

@cbajada

Windows have now launched WSL with GUI support

Yes, I saw that too – but it’s preview-only at the moment, available to those who have signed up for the Windows Insider Program. I have no intention of doing that, so I’ll wait till it reaches actual release before taking a closer look…

If it works out, we’ll most likely switch to recommending WSL2 rather than MSYS2 on Windows. It does offer better performance and integration with FSL / ANTs. The only thing still tying us to MSYS2 currently is the GUI.

Cheers!
Donald.

[sniogi]

Sorry, I did not see this thread earlier. I created a new post/thread stating that I got Mrtrix to run on WSLg which comes as part of the Windows 11 beta build.