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Boxedwine is an emulator that can run Windows applications in the browser
- marwis 5y agoThere's a company doing a high performance version of this for a while: https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx/ https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx/
- avidiax 5y agohttp://www.boxedwine.org/demo/ http://www.boxedwine.org/demo/ Very light games are playable. I'm sure that legacy line-of-business software would have zero trouble.
- fouc 5y agoI tried AoE in safari but that didn't work.. works in firefox though
- erhk 5y agoWrite a review
- heavyset_go 5y agoHow well?
- arilotter 5y agoWow, I managed to run 3D Pinball Space Cadet at a fluid 60fps with audio disabled. This is a pretty mind-boggling thing to have exist.
- singularity2001 5y agoEven runs on iPad FF ! wow indeed
- speedgoose 5y agoAn iPad is pretty fast. The iPad Pro M1 is faster than quite a lot of brand new laptops.
- ravenstine 5y agoRuns horribly on macOS Firefox but, does indeed run at 60fps in Chrome with audio turned off. I wonder why the audio is such a problem? I'd think that audio wouldn't be that expensive even in an emulated environment.
- grawprog 5y agoI have no idea of the details as to why, but in all the years I've used emulators, turning off the audio has always increased the speed of emulation in emulators that are struggling. I realize Wine is not an emulator...but...same shit.
- ugjka 5y agoProbably something to do with html5 audio api
- hutzlibu 5y agoProcessing audio is expensive, when done by the CPU.
- kev_emu 5y agoThe WASM build uses the 'normal' CPU core. In this core the CPU emulator is a collection of indirect calls that performs poorly in WASM due the runtime checks to verify the number of parameters and their types. For other builds there is a dynamic code generator. A similar approach would work wonders. Assistance gratefully accepted! - see source folders under emulation/cpu for armv7, armv8 & x32 for the 30 odd method implementations. To get native like performance a binary translator like that used for the x64 core is required
- kev_emu 5y agoI worked on the emscripten/wasm build of boxedwine. I can answer some questions. The project has been around in some form for 9 years. It was originally in java, then straight c, now c++. Main author previously worked on jdosbox. I previously ported jdosbox to become jsdosbox (via GWT) a decade ago.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DownwardFall 5y agothis is neat! thanks for this! I've been using Shells.com to run windows apps in my browser this gives me some cool ideas for projects.. Thanks!
- brian_herman 5y agoThe prophesy has come true... https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
- re 5y agoIs there a relevant timestamp for those of us not wanting to invest 30 minutes in the full talk?
- ToFab123 5y agoNo. Not really. It a fascinating talk to watch so you are not going to totally waste those 30 minutes.
- phoe-krk 5y agoYes, 0:00-29:23. The point of the talk is not laid out during a single moment; it's more like a story that unfolds over time, allowing the reader to understand its implications bit by bit.
- ant6n 5y agoI think I actually saw this talk live. What are the chances. Definitely worth checking out, it’s pretty fun.
- brian_herman 5y agoWow I am so jealous!
- josephg 5y agoDoes it run Firefox? I’d love to see a browser in a browser, just to experience mediocrity in all its awful glory. Networking would be tricky, but you could encapsulate TCP over a custom websocket tunnel.
- exikyut 5y ago
- zaphirplane 5y agoThis is impressive and inspiring. I’ll take a look at the code after browsing Reddit
- excalibur 5y agoName is perfect
- whollacsek 5y agoGenius name for a genius project!
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoAm I understanding this project correctly that there is no Linux kernel, only a simulation of it? That alone is quite interesting if true, and probably useful outside of just running Wine.
- Cloudef 5y agoSeems so, basically compatibility layer to run another compatibility layer heh
- laumars 5y agoAs per the linked readme, there is a Linux kernel and it is emulated. Basically this project is a Linux emulator but rather than exposing libc APIs it exposes Win32 et al via WINE. Pretty neat idea but comes with all the usual caveats of running Windows software on WINE plus all the new caveats of running C++ in WebAssembly.
- Cloudef 5y agoIts not actually emulating a real linux kernel. It implements its own "kernel" and elf loader: https://github.com/danoon2/Boxedwine/tree/master/source/kernel https://github.com/danoon2/Boxedwine/tree/master/source/kern... so this basically is light WSL w/ CPU emulation to run wine. The project running on browser is not the main point. It can run standalone, and is mostly used to run old games that no longer work well on modern hardware / windows. Heck you can even use it on Linux. I think the coolest part of the project is that it makes wine very portable though. Boxedwine seems like it could run on android as well for example.
- xnyan 5y agoIt gets around the App Store too, thinking mostly about old games.
- userbinator 5y agoYou can also run Windows itself in the browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15763418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15763418
- kinghtown 5y agoThis finally explains why gutter punks love boxed wine.
- imagineerschool 5y agoIncredible! Nicely done!
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoAm I looking at the source properly? The author made their own multiplatform CPU emulator just for this? This is not just Qemu running in a browser, folks. Someone put a huge amount of work into this.
- jdmoreira 5y agoisn't wine? as in https://www.winehq.org https://www.winehq.org
- ObscureScience 5y agoIt's Wine running on Linux (which I gather from a quick look is not the actual kernel, but an minimal self written stub enough to run Wine. Is this correct?) which itself is running in an emulator, compiled into binaries for Window, MacOS, Linux and web.
- danoon 5y agoYes, the goal of Boxedwine is to run old Windows programs in a platform independent way without a VM or disk images. So basically it is Dosbox but for Windows. At first I started out writing my own Win32 API implementation, and it worked for the first couple of games. But eventually I saw it was more than 1 person could do. That is when I realized Wine was the only solution and since that only worked on Linux, I had to create minimal Linux emulator to run Wine. Implementing the kernal syscalls did take some time. But It is capable to running emulated threads and processes in a single threaded app, which is why it works with Emscripten.
- 0x77617472 5y agoI tested it with 2 games (non-browser version, just by downloading it off the website) and was not able to get any of them working. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck:_Goin%27_Quackers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Duck:_Goin%27_Quackers Says error about not being able to find the CD-rom drive. https://humongous.fandom.com/wiki/Putt-Putt:_Pep%27s_Birthday_Surprise https://humongous.fandom.com/wiki/Putt-Putt:_Pep%27s_Birthda... I just get a error saying "Error É" whilst trying to run the executable. Both do install fine into %APPDATA% though. I've tried both the x86/x64 versions executables of Boxedwine. Mounting CD-rom directly, extracting it to ISO then to a folder doesn't seem to work either. Do you happen to have any idea what I might be doing wrong or if those games are not yet supported at all? Thanks
- infinityplus1 5y agoIf it turns out that Win32 APIs+Wine+Javascript is the ultimate cross platform way to run apps, I would laugh my heart out.
- emayljames 5y agoSounds like virus central. I would have thought having a small Linux in the browser would have been better.
- DoctorOW 5y agoIf someone releases an old Windows app for Mac and Linux using this and Electron I hope a story about it reaches HN. It'd be the ultimate combination of tech we love to hate. :)
- aidanhs 5y agoI first came across this a while ago and after digging I found the way it worked (and possibly still works) behind the scenes is pretty cool: https://groups.google.com/g/emscripten-discuss/c/4Qw8OOgTvu0/m/dPETA4AWBgAJ https://groups.google.com/g/emscripten-discuss/c/4Qw8OOgTvu0... > A while ago I was pondering getting emscripten working under Wine, but realised that it's not quite as simple as a typical program (because Wine relies on being able to just provide a compatibility layer for syscalls, so the compatibility layer for x86 would have to be provided by the port to emscripten). > Seeing this post, I wondered if you'd found some cunning way around this so downloaded the project. No, you've just gone straight ahead and implemented an x86 emulator! Ok, but how is wine able to run on bare metal? Oh right, you've actually implemented parts of linux, including most of the syscall interface, your own executable loader, parts of procfs and assorted special devices! Alright, but (as Alon asks) how does this actually render things? Ah I see, you've implemented your own display driver in Wine which, when methods are invoked, dispatches interrupts to the emulated CPU which then forwards and translates the interrupt to an equivalent sdl call (with opengl working a similar way, but with a dll)! > Wow!
- kev_emu 5y agoBoxedWine does OpenGL passthrough on platforms where available. This does not extend to the WASM/WebGL, but I really tried! I was able to get it working for some simple OpenGL applications with help from gl4es, but was unable to make it work with textures beyond one example [1]. I would appreciate some assistance if anyone has the required skills. [1] - https://kevodwyer.github.io/boxedwine-examples/v1/boxedwine.html?app=dinoshade&p=dinoshade.exe https://kevodwyer.github.io/boxedwine-examples/v1/boxedwine....
- fighterpilot 5y agoFor a Linux user, can someone explain in what situations this is preferable to regular Wine?
- danoon 5y agoIt can run on other Linux platforms beside x86. It runs on a Rasberry Pi https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=932411#p932411 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=932411#p932411
- anthk 5y agoIt may run under OpenBSD. Good until thfr fixed the Wine (re)-port for OpenBSD. I mostly play IF and slashem, but Deus Ex it's game I liked a lot in my teen years.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoJust for the record this is the best name ever.
- danoon 5y agoBoxedwine was used to bring an old game, The Voodoo Kid, that has some compatibility issues with modern Windows to Gog.com https://www.gog.com/game/voodoo_kid https://www.gog.com/game/voodoo_kid
- remix2000 5y agoWhy WINE on Linux instead of ReactOS? Do browsers have some Linux simulation facilities built-in?
- danoon 5y agoReactOS is a full OS, so it needs to run in a VM which requires disk images. Boxedwine emulates everything it needs and can use the users file system directly. So you can just drag a setup or game that doesn't require installation right into the UI and it will work.
- remix2000 5y agoDoesn’t BoxedWine emulate Linux kernel then?
- danoon 5y agoYeah, I implement a good amount of the kernel syscalls that Wine needs. It was easier for me to implement the 200-300 Kernel calls, like open file, etc, than implement the entire Windows API, which is why I used Wine for this project.