0008183: Win-KeX can't start in Window Mode with latest version WSL from Store

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0008183	Kali Linux	General Bug	public	2023-02-17 20:30	2025-07-14 09:35

Reporter	palyn	Assigned To	re4son
Priority	normal	Severity	major	Reproducibility	always
Status	acknowledged	Resolution	open

Summary	0008183: Win-KeX can't start in Window Mode with latest version WSL from Store
Description	Win-KeX can't start in Window Mode probably because of latest WSL updates.
Steps To Reproduce	kex --win --sound Error connecting to the KeX server. Please try "kex start" to start the service. If the server fails to start, please try "kex kill" or restart your WSL2 session and try again.
Additional Information	The bug is close to https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=8110, only difference is Window versus Seamless Mode. Here are the similar issues that I found: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/discussions/6675 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/9303 https://github.com/TigerVNC/tigervnc/issues/1564 I think (thanks to links above) the problem is that `/tmp/.X11-unix` is being mounted in read-only mod (from recent WSL update). There are two temporary solution: 1.`sudo mount -o remount,rw /tmp/.X11-unix` before `kex --win --sound` helped with Window Mode, but [Seamless Mode] (https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=8110) didn't work. So I have just rolled back to the previous version WSL2 (from Windows Optional Features) and all modes work fine

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2023-02-17 20:30	palyn	New Issue
2023-02-17 20:34	palyn	Note Added: 0017526
2023-02-17 21:57	Gamb1t	Assigned To	=> re4son
2023-02-17 21:57	Gamb1t	Status	new => assigned
2025-07-14 09:12	g0tmi1k	Status	assigned => acknowledged
2025-07-14 09:35	g0tmi1k	Priority	high => normal

palyn 2023-02-17 20:34 reporter ~0017526	This is possible explanation of WSL changes