Gtk-warning cannot open display Windows Ubuntu

As a classroom for learning Unix/Linux, I'm using Microsoft's Ubuntu App in Windows 10. I want to run:

gedit somefile.txt

But I get the following:

Failed to connect to Mir: Failed to connect to server socket: No such file or directory
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
(gedit:27829): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0

None of the following solutions have worked:

1. As per this page I tried gksu gedit and just get the final line of the above error, and I tried sudo nano and can edit the file (but isn't really a solution as I want to use gedit).

2. As per @WinEunuuchs2Unix's solution I downloaded VcXsrv, added export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 to ~/.bashrc, installed ubuntu-desktop and yad and still get my original error when trying to open gedit.

3. As per this page I installed Xming and vim-gtk and tried gvim instead of gedit and get:

   E233: cannot open display

4. I followed this PC world tutorial probem-free up until dbus-launch --exit-with-session ~/.xsession, which gives me:

   /usr/bin/startxfce4: X server already running on display :0.0 xrdb: Connection refused xrdb: Can't open display ':0.0' xfce4-session: Cannot open display: . Type 'xfce4-session --help' for usage.

And now I don't know what else to try, so I'd love some help! I also hope this is a good question and apologize if I'm making a typical newbie error.

1 Answer

i recommend xhost + which is potentially dangerous as it lets anyone in the universe to connect to your X session, but you can run that then run your command, after the software starts up then run xhost - so you will be secure again. Thats a temprary workaround :)