Nvidia Graphic Card for WSL2
In Cygwin as an Alternative Linux Environment on Windows, the drawback of WSL2 in visualization was discussed in detail. An obvious problem with Cygwin is being too old — a lot of packages are left unmaintained, and it seems that people are gradually embracing WSL instead of Cygwin.
This posts enables using Nvidia graphic within WSL2, so Linux-based visualization software can run smoothly. Tested on 18 Jul. 2026.
Install CUDA toolkit
Try this command:
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$ nvidia-smi
If this does not run correctly, CUDA toolkit is required. As the prerequisite, graphic card driver is need within Windows. Check Nvidia user guide.
However, the installation guide is not compatible with the latest Ubuntu release. Use the following commands to add Nvidia source to apt source list :
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$ wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/wsl-ubuntu/x86_64/cuda-wsl-ubuntu-keyring.gpg
$ sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cuda-wsl-ubuntu-keyring.gpg cuda-wsl-ubuntu-keyring.gpg
$ cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d
$ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/wsl-ubuntu/x86_64/ /'
Then update the source and choose the version compatible to the graphic card in the prompt:
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$ sudo apt modernize-sources
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cuda-toolkit-*
For graphic rendering
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$ sudo apt install mesa-utils vulkan-tools
$ glxinfo -B
The display port must be 0, i.e., ‘name of display: :0’. Otherwise set the following environmental variable and add it to ~/.bashrc:
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$ export DISPLAY=:0
If the string below says ‘OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe…’, run the following lines and add it to ~/.bashrc:
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$ export MESA_D3D12_DEFAULT_ADAPTER_NAME=NVIDIA
$ export GALLIUM_DRIVER=d3d12
Then try glxinfo -B again. It should give something like ‘OpenGL renderer string: D3D12 (NVIDIA RTX A1000 Laptop GPU)’.
Alternatively, prepend the following command to force GPU rendering for specific software only:
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env MESA_D3D12_DEFAULT_ADAPTER_NAME=NVIDIA GALLIUM_DRIVER=d3d12 <path/to/executable>