Explain what to do if example commands fail

[grebnetiew]

When following the FUSE troubleshooting steps, the docs say to do

> sudo modprobe -v fuse

but the author assumes this works, and does not explain how to proceed in case of a response of

modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:586 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/4.4.0-43-Microsoft/modules.dep.bin'
modprobe: FATAL: Module fuse not found in directory /lib/modules/4.4.0-43-Microsoft

As you may have suspected, this is the result when following your guide on Ubuntu as installed on WSL, where unfortunately modprobe and kernel modules in general are not supported. Up till this point, nothing in the docs has indicated that using WSL means AppImages will not work at all ever.

Suggestion to improve the docs would be to either indicate up front, e.g. as one of the linux flavours, that WSL does not support AppImages.

By extension, it would be nice if the guide for using an AppImage without fuse would explain which file to run after --appimage-extract, since I now have a directory full of files, many of them executable, but none clearly named after the program I want to run.

[TheAssassin]

WSL is not officially supported, since it's a weird and proprietary system that requires an installation of a proprietary OS. Therefore, there is a best-effort policy for supporting WSL (as in, if someone tests some aspects and reports back, we take that into account in docs, etc.).

That said, it doesn't mean WSL can't run any AppImages. As you say, extracting them and running the contents works, especially for simpler apps (I guess something like neovim should run without any problems). It only can't run FUSE, but there's projects to work around that.

Regarding compatibility, our docs clearly state that FUSE is one of the very few runtime dependencies. It's widely spread in real Linux distributions. It's not like it isn't documented. I don't know why Microsoft market their WSL thingy as "Linux on Windows", it's pretty incomplete in terms of supporting widely used technologies.

Thanks for your feedback. I think someone should extend that section in the docs, or maybe even create a page dedicated to WSL. However, especially the latter will only happen if some WSL user takes the time to write that and send it to us as a PR.

Would you like to send a PR improving docs so they're more useful to WSL users like you? You have a much better view at things than any of us has there, I bet.