How To Enable WSL2 Ubuntu GUI and use RDP to Remote

WSL2 continues to be one of my top features I want to explore and learn more about in the entire Windows 10 offering. What Microsoft is doing with WSL is fascinating and the endless possibility of having Linux and Windows in such deep marriage is beyond my wildest dream.

In today’s guide, we will use Window’s native RDP client to remote connect into your local WSL2 Ubuntu on the same machine. (when is the last time you RDP into localhost? … and the destination is also running in Linux, not Windows) This never happened to me until just recently. Below is a sneak peek of the end result. Let’s get started.

We assume by now you already have WSL2 running and have at least Ubuntu installed. You can follow this guide to upgrade your Ubuntu to the latest 20.04 LTS distro if you haven’t already done so.

First the standard

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade

Next we are going to install a GUI distro to Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install -y kubuntu-desktop

Half way through the installation you will be prompt for this configurating sddm, select lightdm

Install and configure XDRP, and change the RDP port to 3390

# install xrdp
sudo apt-get install xrdp
sudo cp /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini.bak
sudo sed -i 's/3389/3390/g' /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini
sudo sed -i 's/max_bpp=32/#max_bpp=32\nmax_bpp=128/g' /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini
sudo sed -i 's/xserverbpp=24/#xserverbpp=24\nxserverbpp=128/g' /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

Lastly, enable Dbus

#enable dbus
sudo systemctl enable dbus
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start
sudo /etc/init.d/xrdp start
# check xrdp status
sudo /etc/init.d/xrdp status

You should see something like this below.

Now launch your Windows Remote Desktop Connection, or mstsc from the Windows Start menu.

enter localhost:3390 and connect. You will be prompt by this screen keep the session as xorg, and enter your WSL2 username and password.

That’s it, you are now connected to your WSL2 Ubuntu with a GUI over Windows’ native RDP client. How crazy is this?!