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I try to use GUI Apps on Windows 11 via WSL and WSLg. Unfortunately my GUI app needs some custom fonts (specifically xfonts-100dpi and xfonts-75dpi). Since WSLg does not include those fonts, my GUI App crashes.
How can I install those fonts and make them available for WSLg (the x11 server)?
I've installed them for WSL itself, but it does not look like they get shared with WSLg. Even manually copying the font files from /usr/share/fonts to /mnt/wslg/fonts did not change anything.
It sounds like you may be running the older release of WSL that came with Windows 11 as a Windows feature.
Support for using fonts from your distribution in WSLg was added fairly recently in the WSL release that you can now install as an application package from the Microsoft Store. It does this by mounting your current distribution into the WSLg system distribution and (presumably, but I haven't double-checked) symlinking or bind-mounting /usr/share/fonts within WSLg to point to your distributions equivalent.
To install the new version, either:
Make sure you are on Windows 11 22H2
Exit WSL
Start a regular PowerShell (non-admin) shell and:
wsl --shutdown
wsl --update
wsl --version
If that doesn't work, or if you are on Windows 11 21H2, then just manually install the new release from its Microsoft Store page.
Side-note: Windows 10 users can now also update to this release (and use WSLg). See this question for more details on the prerequisites.
