How to use Avalonia with WSL Ubuntu Linux?

[martin-honnen]

In #11554 I reported problems to use OpenFileDialog with a Windows 11 WSL Ubuntu 22 installation as my intent to do so resulted in an error Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: Neither DBus nor GTK are available on the system.
I inferred from the comments and the error message that additional packages needed to be installed under WSL Ubuntu Linux to have that worked and initially though that installing gedit is one way to have (I think) GTK on the system.
But in the end on a closer look it turns out that, at least in my tests, that makes gedit run without problems under both WSL Ubuntu 20 and 22 but for AvaloniaUI apps I get segmentation fault errors, under Ubuntu 20 only when closing the app, but with Ubuntu 22 it is not even possible to start up an app successfully, the window frame shows up, but then dies and the segmentation fault shows up in the console.

That is, after some testing, not happening in my own apps code but happens with just the app created by the template e.g. dotnet new avalonia.mvvm.

And the segmentation fault happens then (after installing gedit in the hope to add GTK dependencies) with both Avalonia 10 or preview 11 apps (I have not tried the 11 RC so far).

Perhaps it is just my lack of understanding of how cleanly install the DBus nor GTK dependencies for WSL Ubuntu Linux, without ending up with segmentation faults for Avalonia desktop apps.

Any hints appreciated.

[timunie]

Foreget the prev. comment. The issue is linked already. So in that case, please update to RC1 and also try to run the App without debugger.

[martin-honnen]

I have in the meantime created and tested a sample MVVM RC candidate app but it shows the same problem, under WSL Ubuntu 22 (where I did install gedit to have GTK support) the Window "frame" comes up shortly, then vanishes, and the console shows a segmentation fault, under WSL Ubuntu 20 (also with gedit installed to have GTK support) the Window shows up and the app seems to work, only on closing the app window the console (also) show a segmentation fault.

This is all done with release builds, so no debugger involved.

I also went to the trouble to install a complete Ubuntu 22 Desktop in a Windows 11 Hyper-V VM, there everything Avalonia Desktop related works (haven't tried RC there yet), so this problem seems with some configuration/dependency of Ubuntu WSL I just might lack the right clue to solve or prevent (to have on the one hand the needed GTK dependencies installed but not mess up the installation to then run into segmentation faults).

[MikeCodesDotNET]

This might help: https://curia.me/develop-graphical-linux-apps-with-avalonia-ui/

[hjrb]

This solves the problem!
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt-get autoremove -y
sudo apt install libice6
sudo apt install libsm6
sudo apt install libfontconfig1

[martin-honnen]

No, the packages mentioned there are already installed; what I additionally did to get a file dialog was to install a GTK tool like gedit, then installed a ton of dependencies but on all Ubuntu WSL installations I have tried that I then end up (for Ubuntu 22) with the segmentation fault when trying to start the an Avalonia desktop app and (for Ubuntu 20) with the segmentation fault when closing the app.

Where I don't install gedit my Avalonia desktop apps run fine but an attempt to use a FileDialog ends up with "Neither DBus nor GTK are available on the system".

[affederaffe]

Avalonia uses the xdg-desktop-portal to provide native file choosers, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal.
For Ubuntu, it seems like you have to install xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-gnome

[jpmikkers]

How to get ubuntu-24.04 and Avalonia on WSL:

In windows command line run:

wsl --install Ubuntu-24.04

The following commands are all from the wsl linux shell.
install dotnet 8:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y dotnet-sdk-8.0

the dotnet 8 installation can be verified with

dotnet --version

to run avalonia programs you need a few additional dependencies:

sudo apt install libice6
sudo apt install libsm6