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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

#141

Post by pjmlp »

hypercube33 wrote: post #130
pjmlp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of blending applications is as old as X Windows servers on Windows like Hummingbird, although it wasn't virtualization, the remote X Windows applications would blend on the desktop.

Thanks to search being trash there was a probject that let you run basically remote apps Linux to windows ie run the apps on a Linux host and the ux is handled on the windows client as a seamless local app. I think it mostly worked. I have no idea what the project was called and none of it was beyond alpha but it seemed really cool and possibly useful more than ever now

That is basically X Windows, unless I am misunderstanding the description.

X Windows server is the part that runs on the client.

Hummingbird nowadays has a different name,

https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/remote-access/...

There are also other options like X Win32,

https://www.starnet.com/xwin32/

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

#142

Post by downut »

prox wrote: post #32
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.

As someone who is looking to go Linux, do most windows apps work now through Wine or VirtualBox ? I know Valve did a lot of work for games. It’s been 4 years since I even took a good look at it.

I hardly want to run windows apps at all, but I have a garmin etrex 32x and I can't for the life of me get garmin windows software to run on wine or linux crossover (something to do with USB) and there is nothing available on linux that can talk to the device. I'd run Windows 10 in a VM but I looked (I think?) pretty carefully and valid Windows licenses seem to be well over $100, cheaper to use a refurbed office desktop.

Someone stomp me down and tell me I'm wrong, please.

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

#143

Post by heavyset_go »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #33

Windows have wsl and linux have wine,winapps etc at some point in the future, Your OS wouldnt matters because all OS is reaching feature parity

Won't happen because of remote attestation and integrity verification.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

prmoustache wrote: post #102
swores wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many countries have laws against "hidden defects". One could argue that adding ads after some time from a system putchased without ads throuh updates is a defect that has been hidden at purchase time.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by venturecruelty »

jonp888 wrote: post #6

This system works by launching an official Windows image in Docker and then making an RDP connection to it. There are a couple of others too now like WinBoat What all of them avoid mentioning is that the images were intended by Microsoft for test and development purposes on Windows and the license clearly states you need a valid Windows license to use them: https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/windows#license I wonder…

>...and the license clearly states you need a valid Windows license to use them.

It's a license, not a cop.

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

#146

Post by BlaDeKke »

Telaneo wrote: post #138
BlaDeKke wrote: post #27

I tried this method for my wife. So she could use ms office in Linux. This isn’t an elegant solution. She’s back to windows 11. We tried…

What were the problems she encountered? I'd assume lag or inelegance, but that can be fixed by using a native Linux solution (i.e. Libreoffice), but I assume you've already tried/rejected that for other reasons. What were those in that case?

Lag was certainly a factor, but there were also weird behaviors like visual glitches and UI rendering issues. There were a number of intermittent problems that are hard to list specifically, as it’s been a few months since we tried it.

She is not a power user. Working inside a container running Windows just to display MS Word introduces complexity. separate file systems, etc. Sometimes the abstraction breaks, and you "fall out" of the app and end up staring at a Windows environment. It is very confusing for a layperson. On top of that, the RAM overhead was significant for her older laptop.

She is a kindergarten teacher. The last thing she can use is friction on her laptop.

We didn't try LibreOffice. I'm familiar with it, but the learning curve/transition is just too much friction. They also share a lot of documents with colleagues. I don't know the current state of compatibility between MS Office and LibreOffice, but I recall layouts breaking regularly. She also has a library of templates originally created in MS Office.

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

#147

Post by venturecruelty »

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…

Well yeah. The goal for most of these people is to pad a portfolio so they can either get or remain gainfully employed. We are in the performative software era. It's not about data structures or algorithms anymore, it's all about GitHub stars.

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

#148

Post by venturecruelty »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #134
Amekedl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate regarding tauri? I figured it has matured into a fine electron alternative.

Not OP, but I recall Tauri greatly overstating their memory usage claims. It is ultimately a browser running your "app", but just because it's not bundled with your app, doesn't make it consume any lesser RAM. And they even admitted that their benchmarks were wrong[1]. A lot of claims were also made about how Tauri is magically more performant than Electron apps and feels like a native app, but not only is this not t…

I can't believe people will still put in all of this work instead of just... using their system's native GUI. Mind-boggling.

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

#150

Post by prmoustache »

mathfailure wrote: post #105
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UI is sluggish You absolutely need to pass through a GPU so that DWM.exe is properly accelerated; otherwise, it falls back to the software-accelerated WARP and the performance tanks to ~15 FPS. It doesn't need to be anything powerful; if you have an idle integrated card that you aren't using on the Linux host because you only interact with it through a Web server or SSH (for instance, Proxmox), then pass that throu…

To pass through a GPU - you'd need an extra GPU then..?

yes
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