You could do the same thing with User Mode Linux or a virtual machine. WSL is just the easiest/fastest way to run native Linux binaries on a Windows system. I

You could do the same thing with User Mode Linux or a virtual machine. WSL is just the easiest/fastest way to run native Linux binaries on a Windows system. If you have a X11 server installed properly on windows and can run Linux apps over ssh (which I've done with cygwin, but there are other paid options as well), then you can run them over ssh to a virtual linux on your own host, or look for ways to skip the ssh tunnel if they can route packets to eachother. I'm a little surprised the examples don't require fiddling with X permissions, which I always had to do when not using ssh.