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WinApps: Run Windows apps in Linux as if they were a part of the native OS
- zelon88 6y agoIt is very smooth to watch. I am curious though. It seems as though this makes an RDP server in a VM and then connects to it. How secure is it?
- OkGoDoIt 6y agoWorst case scenario you could set firewall rules to not allow external access to the RDP port (3389). You could also set your VM to host-only networking, but in that case Microsoft office wouldn’t be able to use any cloud functionality. Although I guess that could be a feature, not a bug, depending on your viewpoint
- Fmstrat 6y agoHi, I'm the author so I figure I can answer this. The system is built to run a local VM and RDP using the local NAT IP provided by the KVM networking system. So all RDP traffic is local to the machine. If for some reason you decide to use a separate server for RDP via the configuration, standard encryption pathways are in place just as with any other RDP scenario.
- shmerl 6y agoI'd prefer Wine for this, since it avoids using Windows.
- feelandcoffee 6y agoSeem interesting and I liked... But, I'm afraid a DMCA will finish the project as the legal area seems dark gray at least.
- bendhoefs 6y agoWhy? This appears to only be a very fancy virtual machine configuration.
- amluto 6y agoHow so? This seems squeaky clean to me. You install a (presumably properly licensed) copy of Windows in a VM, you set it up, and you use RDP (a documented protocol from MS, no less) to view programs in rootless mode. If you want to get fancy, you could use software from Citrix to do more or less the same thing.
- bananamerica 6y agoYou don’t really need a license use Windows if you don’t care about the watermark.
- userbinator 6y agoDMCA? There is nothing here that implies circumvention or copyright. It's essentially just RDP'ing to a VM and showing a specific app's window instead of the whole desktop. This is not all that much different from VirtualBox "seamless mode", and VMware's "unity".
- rlili 6y agoSo it's like reverse WSL2?
- OkGoDoIt 6y agoThis is more like Parallels Desktop integration on Mac. It’s Windows in a VM (with all the overhead that entails), showing the rasterized app windows into the Linux desktop window manager and launcher via the remote desktop protocol which is more commonly used for remote machine access. Definitely nice to have that seamless integration, but realistically it’s heavier than WSL. In the readme it says the author is trying to strip out some of the heavier elements of the Windows shell, in which case it could be more lightweight, closer to what WSL2 is doing. But if you wanted to do that, you might be better off using Windows Server Core Edition in the VM.
- Fmstrat 6y agoWSCE was mentioned in the Reddit thread, so I've added that to my list to do some discovery on as well. If it works out, I'll revise the README appropriately.
- mastrsushi 6y agoWhat makes this better than Wine?
- Xenograph 6y agoWine is an (imperfect) emulation layer. This runs Windows apps inside a VM, thus avoiding potential compatibility issues that are common with Wine. Downside is that running a VM requires more system resources, of course.
- OJFord 6y agoAren't you thinking of that other project, WIA(I)EL?
- xklsz 6y agohow does this compare to seamlessrdp which does the same thing? https://github.com/rdesktop/seamlessrdp https://github.com/rdesktop/seamlessrdp
- tjoff 6y ago"SeamlessRDP requires Windows Server 2008r2 or later to operate correctly." That seems like a very limiting requirement for many use-cases.
- k4rli 6y agoHow is this more limiting than WinApps which only supports Windows 10 with RDP?
- tjoff 6y agoWindows 10 with RDP is cheaper and has a significantly larger usebase?
- rnestler 6y agoSince Windows 10 is newer than Windows Server 2008 I assume it is supported as well, since it says "Windows Server 2008 or later" is required.
- tjoff 6y agoI would not, server is a different product line and MS has different features of RDP enabled for different versions. Typically you distinguish consumer and server versions when listing compatible versions. And RemoteApp is not officially supported (as a server) on Windows 10 Pro/Home.
- m_x 6y agoThis project is about integration with the Gnome desktop. It uses xfreerdp RemoteApp support[1] under the hood (an up to date equivalent of seamlessrdp). [1] https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/wiki/RemoteApp https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/wiki/RemoteApp
- rkagerer 6y agoHow seamless are things like clipboard interaction etc.
- Fmstrat 6y agoThey work for me as long as you have Bi-directional clipboard enabled in KVM.
- pitterpatter 6y agoKVM itself doesn't really do anything with clipboards. What's more likely happening here is that the RDP client used by this project (FreeRDP) supports the RDP clipboard redirection feature. See: rdpclip.exe running in the target machine whenever you RDP.
- snicker7 6y agoWith Proton, Steam is basically a Windows app launcher for Linux.
- unnouinceput 6y agoCool. Can you run RDR2 under Linux?
- morsch 6y agoEvidently, yes: https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180 https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180
- unnouinceput 6y agoonline - no. offline, with issues (audio crackling, crashes). So "evidently" it's a poor experience, at best.
- maltalex 6y agoAccording to protondb, sort of: https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180 https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180
- unnouinceput 6y agoGood word, "sort of". I would imagine if your car would "sort of" work would you be willing to drive it?
- laumars 6y agoIf I had to and there was no risk of injury. Much like how there’s no risk of injury here.
- ben-schaaf 6y agoYes? Aircon in my car hasn't worked in over a year, why would I stop driving it. And that's beside the fact that RDR2 is a form of entertainment, whereas for a lot of people driving is a necessity. It's pretty easy to find games that run well on Linux.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoTry SoftMaker FreeOffice. It's compatible with MS Office, works well in HiDPI and it's free.
- Fmstrat 6y agoI did before this. And OnlyOffice, and LibreOffice, and even Electron O365s I created. None could handle all the different PPT themes and animations used in our presentations.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoFor sure that might be the case, but it does not make it a bad product.
- app4soft 6y agoLSW - Linux Subsystem for Windows. UPD: Just draw a sketch of LSW icon/logo[0] using SolveSpace 3.0 pre-release "nightly" build[1,2]. [0] https://i.imgur.com/LIOy1nV.png https://i.imgur.com/LIOy1nV.png [1] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master [2] https://github.com/Symbian9/SolveSpace-Daily-Engineering#solvespace-3x-slvs https://github.com/Symbian9/SolveSpace-Daily-Engineering#sol...
- TimTheTinker 6y agoIndeed. This or something like it could be incorporated into a Microsoft-maintained Ubuntu-based Linux distro for backward compatibility. Meanwhile it could have a new displayPS compositing window manager and a nice dev kit. I’d probably abandon macOS for web development... Maybe call it Windows NC (for next century).
- app4soft 6y ago> This or something like it could be incorporated into a Microsoft-maintained Ubuntu-based Linux distro for backward compatibility. I prefer if LSW would be incorporated in WSL for "recursion": > LSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWS...
- forgotmypw17 6y agoThanks for supporting IE. It is a great browser in many ways, and I,ll take IE6 over Crome for writing any day of the week (and do). Corny noobs hate on it because of quirks, oh well.
- Fmstrat 6y agoHaha Redditors called this "Evil" but I've got a number of positive comments for it due to all those old IE only government apps.
- surfsvammel 6y agoThink this is a great idea. I’m for sure going to check it out. Working with Microsoft Office is the one thing I still cannot do under Linux. I know people will suggest all kinds of native Linux apps that supports the Office formats, but they just never work out, there is always some problem with them. Also, Office basically does not work (at least newer versions of Office) over Wine. I am going to try it out!
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoI use Libre Office in GNU/Linux and I am free from severe vendor lock. Rumors about impossibility for a business to work without MSO are overblown.
- codewithcheese 6y agoI wish but many complex excel sheets on LibreOffice Calc do not function correctly.
- RealStickman_ 6y agoI found that wps office seems to work better than LibreOffice in terms of compatibility with complicated MSOffice files. It's free but not open source, if you care about that.
- zhdc1 6y agoSimple excel sheets are also hit or miss.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoLibreofice calc sheets do not work at all in Excel, so the criticism is unwarranted. Just work in the native format.
- zhdc1 6y agoLibre Office != Microsoft Office Word, Excel, & PowerPoint are the only reason I keep a spare Windows 10 laptop.
- franga2000 6y agoThis looks pretty nice! Is it using RDS RemoteApp or something 3rd-party? I seem to recall RemoteApp only running on Server editions and no real alternative existing last time I looked into this. A
- Jaruzel 6y agoYes, it's using RDS RemoteApps. You can semi-activate it on any modern version of windows with a registry key hack, which is included in the repo. The clever bit here is the winapp code that builds the RDP shortcuts to directly launch the remote apps.
- franga2000 6y agoNice! I'll definitely be checking it out then
- koksik202 6y agoWould be great if it could run x86 on arm but I guess if it was that easy it would already be done
- bonzini 6y agoThe original reason why Bellard wrote QEMU was to run Wine on non-x86 machines. In theory one could do the same here.
- angry_octet 6y agoIt would be better if this could acknowledge the security is an important requirement... Like not sharing the whole home drive when only a single file is required. It's interesting because Windows 10 with VSM actually runs Windows apps in a VM (though letting them talk directly to devices, so definitely not a micro kernel). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/iis-support-blog/windows-10-device-guard-and-credential-guard-demystified/ba-p/376419 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/iis-support-blog/wind...
- Fmstrat 6y agoI hear you, here, but the home directory needs to be shared to support "Save As". I will keep thinking on this one for sure.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoMake a sub-folder and offer to save within that folder?
- folmar 6y agoOr go the browser way and make the filepicker system-level and granting access as you select.
- angry_octet 6y agoFuse is probably a better starting point. Something like sshfs. Adapt it so supports showing the directory sub-tree, but not the files (other than ones selected with the native GUI). On macos it is quite common now for apps to pop up a dialogue box to ask for file open/browse permission for a particular location. I presume something similar is done on Windows A.
- AnonsLadder 6y agoQubesOS has an implementation of this called seamless mode and doesn't require an RDP server nor having to manually add software: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-tools/#using-windows-appvms-in-seamless-mode https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-tools/#using-windows-ap... Here's a screenshot of using Powerpoint: https://www.qubes-os.org/attachment/wiki/WindowsAppVms/windows-seamless-1.png https://www.qubes-os.org/attachment/wiki/WindowsAppVms/windo... It's been awhile but I recall some VM managers having this feature (seamless mode) though. I'm not sure if it was VirtualBox or paid VMWare.
- laumars 6y agoVMWare might have but VirtualBox definitely did.
- danieldk 6y agoVMWare has a feature called Unity that does this, however AFAIR support was removed for Linux hosts and guests a while ago.
- gigatexal 6y agosure but is the QubesOS method as performant as RDP? RDP just sends the draw commands not the image bits that's why it can be really performant.
- tpmx 6y agoNote: > the first thing you need to do is set up a Virtual Machine running Windows 10 Professional (or any version that supports RDP).
- jsmith99 6y agoThis seems to be the same technology as Remoteapp, a windows/citrix system for streaming individual app windows over RDP, often from Azure, and which is built into windows. Several years ago I experimented with this, using the RemoteApp Tool [0] to stream Photoshop from a local Windows 10 VM to the (Windows 10) host. [0] https://github.com/kimmknight/remoteapptool https://github.com/kimmknight/remoteapptool
- easytiger 6y agoHasn't this been a feature in desktop vms for over a decade? Or am I missing something
- lerpapoo 6y agorun (4) windows apps in linux as if they were part of the native OS.