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windows-10pyqt5ubuntu-16.04compatibilityqtgui

Could I develop GUI software with Python QT within Ubuntu WSL?


I'm working on Windows 10 most of the time. I want to learn something new and I've decided to build an GUI software with Python QT.

Since I do have Ubuntu installed as a subsystem, could I use it to actually run the software that I'll be building? I know that Linux and Windows do not share the same graphic interface or something like that (correct me if I'm wrong) and I expect the Python QT package within Ubuntu to use a library incompatible with Windows.

Could I make this work or I should not bother and install python natively on Windows?

Thank you.


Solution

  • You could test if the GUI application works using a third party X server such as VcxSrv but WSL hasn't been created to support GUI including the development of GUI apps. Creating the python program itself should be fine and you can always do a git commit and run it on a Real Linux box (or the Hyper-V Ubuntu 18.04 image available in the Quick Create Gallery).

    For developing python (or other programming languages) in general, WSL is recommended as they are known to run better, faster, and more reliably with Linux than Windows.

    Update (08/2019): For those brave enough to go to Windows Insiders Skip-Ahead, WSL2 is an available option as well. While you'll still need a third party X server currently, WSL2 has the benefit of a full Linux kernel. Therefore any syscalls that failed previously should work without issue. The X server is for the actual rendering of the app.