Building and Running VCV Rack on WSL2

I’m a total newb on Linux, so dipping into it with WSL2 on Windows 11 (my native environment).

The Rack linux instructions for setting up the build environment on linux works fine, but I encountered some issues running Rack, and didn’t find much info here or on the web. I know others have Rack running in WSL2, but not the details of how to get there.

What I ran into first is that trying to open a file dialog (File>Open) hangs Rack. In my module trying to open a file doesn’t hang, but it never presents UI and always returned null.

What I figured out is that Rack has a runtime dependency that isn’t documented: zenity. So in addition to all the other packages required to build, you have to make sure you have zenity installed:

sudo apt install zenity

This is progress. The next things I need to know are what do I need to install and configure to get MIDI IO and Audio working well?

The only driver I see for MIDI is Jack, but it’s not showing any devices I have connected.

I have Audio that’s working, but latency is high (I’m ok with that for now – WSL2 mainly for testing, not production.

fwiw I do/did my unix testing under Ubuntu running in the free version of VMWare (Player). Although in non-VCV work I have found WSL to be a little easier to set up. But I have to confess I never did any real “running” in there with audio and midi - mostly just making builds and the occasional running of VCV under address sanitizer to find bugs.