Through the Wormhole: Cross-OS Desktop Integration for Linux Applications

With the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Microsoft has been working to make Linux software more accessible to Windows users. Microsoft is also looking to integrate graphical Linux applications into Windows with a subproject of the WSL called WSLg. WSLg has thus far integrated the individual windows of Linux applications with Windows’s window manager. However, modern Linux applications are capable of integrations with the desktop environment that go beyond windowing. The goal of this thesis is to show that it is possible to integrate graphical Linux applications with another operating system’s desktop environment, not just the window manager. It describes the implementation of a program called Wormhole, which facilitates this integration for Linux applications, running in the Windows Subsystem for Linux, into the Windows desktop environment. The results show that Wormhole succeeds in making this integration possible. Four Linux applications were tested with Wormhole, and all were able to integrate better with the Windows desktop environment with the help of Wormhole