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WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

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Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#81

Post by darkwater »

swores wrote: post #70
braiamp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple of terms in contract law, like fairness of obligations, unconscionability, disproportionate penalty, excessive advantage, etc. that the US seems to have forgotten. In the EU and other countries such... aberrations are struck down and unenforceable. People are still scared silly, but the ones that protest are usually left alone.

Those aspects of contract law mean that if MS included "you owe us your first born child" or "if you have not uninstalled this operating system within 2 weeks of installation, you owe Microsoft an additional one million dollars" then that clause wouldn't be valid. They don't however mean that MS choosing to put adverts all over Windows is illegal, or a breach of the contract, just because users would prefer the OS be…

If you bought and paid something (not a subscription) that was ad-free and then all of a sudden in a mandatory update you start to get ads, well, maybe someone already tried and failed to sue MS but personally seems pretty predatory.

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#82

Post by aruggirello »

nickjj wrote: post #69

It's funny because I remember in 2014 before WSL, certain hypervisors like VMWare Player had the ability to run Linux apps in Windows using "unity" mode allowing Linux apps to be seamlessly blended in as regular Windows windows, complete with window decorations, alt tab, shortcuts, etc.. It worked well for what it did, I ran Sublime Text 2 back then in that way and other tools. This looks like an evolution of that, b…

I'm pretty sure you can do the same with Windows apps in Linux, since you can basically do the same with VirtualBox seamless mode too. It only requires installing the "guest additions" drivers - there's no container involved. The only major issues I see there are precisely with alt-tab - you cycle through your host windows, then suddenly ALL guest ones (and you're stuck in the guest until you press right Ctrl) - why is it so difficult to make alt-tab flow inside and outside the VM - at least in seamless mode?

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#83

Post by yonatan8070 »

mathfailure wrote: post #44

Does this even work? podman run mcr.microsoft.com/windows:ltsc2019 Trying to pull mcr.microsoft.com/windows:ltsc2019... Error: choosing an image from manifest list docker://mcr.microsoft.com/windows:ltsc2019: no image found in manifest list for architecture amd64, variant "", OS linux

This runs a container then virtualizes Windows inside it using KVM

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#84

Post by Asmod4n »

BlaDeKke wrote: post #25
RealStickman_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most laptops have included Windows 10 or 11 licenses, which are valid for this use

Last time i checked a Windows 10 and 11 license does not permit running Windows in a virtualized environment. That could have changed by now.

then it would be illegal to use hyper-v, since windows is then run under a hypervisor.

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#85

Post by Brian_K_White »

20k wrote: post #61

Does anyone know if its possible to get shell integration working? The sole app keeping me on windows is tortoisegit: you right click, and get a bunch of git commands on your context menu. If there was any way to get this running in linux, I'd swap

I stand boggled.

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#87

Post by ErroneousBosh »

torginus wrote: post #55
GaryBluto wrote: post #28

I see it's time for the bimonthly reinvention of VirtualBox and VMWare's seamless modes from a few faceless techies on GitHub and designed for people who can't be bothered to use WINE or VirtualBox.

And unfortunately it has become the norm in open-source to push out shiny-looking projects with pretty logos and UX but shoddy underlying technology and deceptive/overstated claims (looking at you Tauri). Thing thing uses RDP for communication which was designed for remotely administering servers over low speed networks. VirtualBox in contrast integrates at the driver level, and allows you to share the underlying GPU…

Why don't they just write a thin layer that interfaces Windows library calls to native Linux calls, possibly with a thin wrapper to shim it where nothing else quite fits? You could re-implement maybe some of the Windows libs as a "clean room project", given the functional description, that then hands off to an equivalent in Linux.

There's probably a cool and snappy acroynm you could use, like Virtual Interface (with nearly) No Overheard, or "Vino".

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#88

Post by xg15 »

noisem4ker wrote: post #58
xg15 wrote: post #43

So essentially the WSL in reverse? I'm kind of surprised you can "run Windows" in a Docker container at all. Isn't the fundamental restriction of Docker that all containers share the same (linux) kernel? Is there a way for docker to inject a "translation layer" somehow that makes it look like an NT kernel for the Windows processes?

The container runs a virtual machine using the host kernel's KVM device. Windows is then automatically installed inside said virtual machine. https://github.com/dockur/windows

Ah, that makes more sense (and learned about KVM today, thank you.)

So more accurately, it's Windows in a VM, and the VM host running in a container.

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#89

Post by nickjj »

aruggirello wrote: post #82
nickjj wrote: post #69

It's funny because I remember in 2014 before WSL, certain hypervisors like VMWare Player had the ability to run Linux apps in Windows using "unity" mode allowing Linux apps to be seamlessly blended in as regular Windows windows, complete with window decorations, alt tab, shortcuts, etc.. It worked well for what it did, I ran Sublime Text 2 back then in that way and other tools. This looks like an evolution of that, b…

I'm pretty sure you can do the same with Windows apps in Linux, since you can basically do the same with VirtualBox seamless mode too. It only requires installing the "guest additions" drivers - there's no container involved. The only major issues I see there are precisely with alt-tab - you cycle through your host windows, then suddenly ALL guest ones (and you're stuck in the guest until you press right Ctrl) - why…

Yep, VirtualBox had it too with guest additions. Once VMWare Player stopped receiving updates I switched over to it.

Since WSL became a thing I stopped using this method since getting a "native" Linux terminal through Windows was enough for me for most things.

Although now that Windows 10 is not receiving updates and my hardware can't run Windows 11, and RAM prices alone cost almost as much as my entire computer did 10 years ago I'm going to be switching to native Linux and not look back, even if it means losing certain video editing capabilities and certain games.

Re: WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

#90

Post by xrd »

Fortnite?

Then my kids can stop complaining and I can stop worrying about supporting Windows. They are happy as clams with Roblox and Minecraft on Ubuntu, and that makes me happy.

I don't see anything mentioned in the issues/discussions nor on the upstream project.

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