WSL2 — Vulkan (NVIDIA)

WSL2 — Vulkan (NVIDIA)#

Running Vulkan applications on an NVIDIA GPU in WSL2.

Summary#

  • Symptom: the application reports only llvmpipe (Mesa’s software renderer).

  • Cause: the Vulkan loader loads only Mesa ICDs (e.g. lvp/llvmpipe), because the NVIDIA Vulkan ICD is not installed in the WSL distribution or not found.

  • Fix: install the matching headless/ICD package in WSL, restart WSL and check with vulkaninfo.

Prerequisites#

  • Windows: a current NVIDIA driver with WSL/WSLg support (Windows 11 recommended). nvidia-smi in WSL should list the card.

  • WSL distribution: apt (or its package manager), network access and root.

Steps (Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions)#

  1. If needed, install the Vulkan tools (for vulkaninfo):

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install vulkan-tools
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-595

  2. Optionally, find the installed NVIDIA driver version:

    nvidia-smi

# Note the Driver Version (e.g. 595.97); package names often carry its major version.

  3. Install the matching headless/ICD package, here for driver version 595:

    # List the available headless packages
apt search nvidia-headless | sed -n '1,200p'

# Example (replace it if your distribution shows other package names):
sudo apt install --reinstall nvidia-headless-595 nvidia-utils-595

# Optional, if available:
sudo apt install libnvidia-gl-595 libnvidia-vulkan-595

  4. Shut WSL down completely (from Windows) and start it again:

    wsl --shutdown

# Then open WSL again (e.g. restart the terminal).

  5. Check in WSL that the NVIDIA ICD is there and vulkaninfo shows the GPU:

    ls -l /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d
vulkaninfo | grep -i 'Device Name' -A2

# or the full output
vulkaninfo | head -n 60

Temporary workaround#

A vendor JSON that exists but is not loaded by default can be forced for a test with VK_ICD_FILENAMES:

export VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia.json
vulkaninfo | head -n 20

Troubleshooting#

  • nvidia-smi works in WSL but only llvmpipe appears: most likely the libnvidia-vulkan-<version> package or the ICD JSON in /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d is missing.

  • Container and VM setups also need GPU passthrough or the nvidia-container-toolkit.

  • After changing packages, always run wsl --shutdown from Windows; an ordinary WSL restart is not enough.