7 ms·

This is just a Windows VM with extra tooling. Makes it look slick, doesn't make it "Windows apps on Linux". Similar projects exist for gaming for example Looki

This is just a Windows VM with extra tooling. Makes it look slick, doesn't make it "Windows apps on Linux". Similar projects exist for gaming for example Looking Glass, which also uses a Windows VM on KVM (the "Windows in Docker" thing is a bit of a lie, Windows doesn't run in the container, Windows runs on KVM on the host kernel). UX wise, this is similar to RAIL. That's not to say that this isn't neat, but it's also not something new (we still have two flavours: API simulation/re-implementation and running the OS [windows]). If this was a new, third flavour, that would be quite the news (in-place ABI translation?).

heavyset_go 1y ago
It's literally just dockur/windows:latest + FreeRDP rootless mode + a small daemon that runs in the VM that tells you what apps are installed via an API. If you don't want the latter part, you'd be better served with the dockur/windows image + FreeRDP
- dijit 1y ago
  can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP? I haven't actually seen that before so forgive me for asking. This project looks like it does that, but I could be wrong.
  - JoshTriplett 1y ago
    > can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP? That's what "rootless" mode does.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    Yes, it's rootless mode. FreeRDP only works with X11, so it runs in Xwayland and the integration isn't as smooth as it could be. It's reminiscent of rootless mode in Parallels, just as janky, too.
    - d3Xt3r 1y ago
      This is incorrect. FreeRDP has supported Wayland since a long time via their `wlfreerdp` client - which is now deprecated, Wayland support is now available via their `sdl3-freerdp` client. The SDL client was alpha quality a couple of years ago, but as of the last couple of recent releases, it's been pretty decent. I'm unsure though if its reached full feature parity yet with the X11 client.
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Thanks for pointing this out, you have just made my life easier
        heavyset_go 1y ago
        Spoke a little too soon, can't seem to get rootless mode working with sdl-freerdp3 in the latest kwin_wayland, but desktop mode works
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  I believe Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary) is an older tool that does pretty much this. My experience with it is that FreeRDP in rootless mode isn't very good for Windows applications that do anything special with window borders. Using Office and many other programs became a pain. When it worked, it worked really well, though. Reminds me of the same feature that VMWare used to offer many years ago for running XP/Vista programs on Windows 7 through a VM.
userbinator 1y ago
Missed opportunity to call it "Linux Subsystem for Windows", or LSW in short.
- riedel 1y ago
  If wine was LSW1 than this is LSW2
  - cheema33 1y ago
    I think this is accurate. WSL v1 did not use a VM, just like Wine. However both WSL v1 and Wine struggled with compatibility issues. WSL 2 gave up and used a VM instead. You pay a performance penalty but compatibility issues mostly go away.
    - Zardoz84 1y ago
      Well, I discrepe a lot with the "compatibility issues" of Wine... Essentially when sometimes can run better and with less issues legacy software that modern Windows.
      - cheema33 1y ago
        Example: My company uses MS Teams for meetings. Wine cannot run it reliably.
        monocasa 1y ago
        Counter example: my windows 10 machine can't play my copy of crysis, but my Ubuntu machine can under wine.
        ClikeX 1y ago
        To be fair. Neither can my MacBook, and that is an official release.
- archargelod 1y ago
  I think this name would be confusing. For one - it is for linux, not windows.And it is a subsystem running Windows. So, it should be called Windows Subsystem for Linux, or WSL.
senectus1 1y ago
and with MS making sure you have to sign in with a MS account... i dont really see the point of this.
- chii 1y ago
  > MS making sure you have to sign in with a MS account if you are capable of running linux, you're capable of working out the various ways to bypass that sign-in "requirement".
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    As a non-coder/engineer Linux user…I’ll admit that’s actually not obvious to me. Linux is trivially easy to run these days. I could probably drop my dad in Mint and he’d assume windows just looks different. Maybe that’s a tad facetious but also ehhhh I could maybe get away with it
  - fragmede 1y ago
    But if using hello@example.com as the email, and using F10 and oobe or whateve command you pulled off Google stop working, and then you have to move to more exotic options, like downloading programs to modify disk images to prepare a USB drive to install an LTSP or IoT copy of windows 10 it's all just such a waste of time to do something that should be easy all because someone at Microsoft got on this kick that what they want is more important than what the customer wants. It's so frustrating!
    - GoblinSlayer 1y ago
      You basically need to do that anyway, because defaults are janky.
- Asmod4n 1y ago
  Only the home version has that issue.
LennyHenrysNuts 1y ago
And I had to come here to find out what it actually was. Why don't project pages ever actually tell you what it is, what it does and how it does it? Half the time it's something like "Plorglewurzle leverages your big data block chain to provide sublinear microservices to Azure Cloud infrastructures" At least this one kind of shows you having to install Windows.
- BobbyTables2 1y ago
  Agree. Have even seen too many companies whose main product completely avoids such questions. I don’t get it. Must be why I’m not wealthy. I always figured one would have to show people a reason why they should give boat loads of money…
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    > Must be why I’m not wealthy. I always figured one would have to show people a reason why they should give boat loads of money… This one hit hard. It turns out Phineas Barnum was right this whole time.
- hypfer 1y ago
  > Why don't project pages ever actually tell you what it is If it's a good thing with substance, they do. If they don't, don't use it. This usually hints at a broken culture/missing substance. It _can_ also be ineptitude, but that too is not your problem but theirs. You woke up this morning not having the problem this sets out to solve. You can go to sleep and rest easily this night, knowing that you still don't have whatever problem this sets out to solve. If you should one day wake up and notice that you have a problem this could solve, you will find yourself googling for a solution, again side-stepping this whole marketing nonsense.
- pipes 1y ago
  I was complaining about this sort of thing in another thread.
- Hobadee 1y ago
  I call this the "marketing website problem". Unfortunately many companies have realized that engineers don't make purchasing decisions. (Mearly suggestions) Rather, C-Suite, who knows nothing about the technical side of things, and everything about the buzzword side, makes the decisions. As a result, companies know that if they just throw a bunch of inflated marketing mumbo-jumbo at the user, while it will turn off every engineer asking "WTF does this actually do and how does it work", some C-Suite will run out and purchase it without asking, then force their entire team to use it because it "produces synergy of the AI block chain and big data cloud APIs while enhancing productivity". Then us Engineers are stuck using it, whether we wanted it or not.
gcr 1y ago
In-place ABI translation is how wine works, what do you mean?
Zardoz84 1y ago
Exactly the same thing of WSL2

heavyset_go 1y ago

It's literally just dockur/windows:latest + FreeRDP rootless mode + a small daemon that runs in the VM that tells you what apps are installed via an API. If you don't want the latter part, you'd be better served with the dockur/windows image + FreeRDP

dijit 1y ago
can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP? I haven't actually seen that before so forgive me for asking. This project looks like it does that, but I could be wrong.
- JoshTriplett 1y ago
  > can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP? That's what "rootless" mode does.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Yes, it's rootless mode. FreeRDP only works with X11, so it runs in Xwayland and the integration isn't as smooth as it could be. It's reminiscent of rootless mode in Parallels, just as janky, too.
  - d3Xt3r 1y ago
    This is incorrect. FreeRDP has supported Wayland since a long time via their `wlfreerdp` client - which is now deprecated, Wayland support is now available via their `sdl3-freerdp` client. The SDL client was alpha quality a couple of years ago, but as of the last couple of recent releases, it's been pretty decent. I'm unsure though if its reached full feature parity yet with the X11 client.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out, you have just made my life easier
      - heavyset_go 1y ago
        Spoke a little too soon, can't seem to get rootless mode working with sdl-freerdp3 in the latest kwin_wayland, but desktop mode works
jeroenhd 1y ago
I believe Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary) is an older tool that does pretty much this. My experience with it is that FreeRDP in rootless mode isn't very good for Windows applications that do anything special with window borders. Using Office and many other programs became a pain. When it worked, it worked really well, though. Reminds me of the same feature that VMWare used to offer many years ago for running XP/Vista programs on Windows 7 through a VM.

userbinator 1y ago

Missed opportunity to call it "Linux Subsystem for Windows", or LSW in short.

riedel 1y ago
If wine was LSW1 than this is LSW2
- cheema33 1y ago
  I think this is accurate. WSL v1 did not use a VM, just like Wine. However both WSL v1 and Wine struggled with compatibility issues. WSL 2 gave up and used a VM instead. You pay a performance penalty but compatibility issues mostly go away.
  - Zardoz84 1y ago
    Well, I discrepe a lot with the "compatibility issues" of Wine... Essentially when sometimes can run better and with less issues legacy software that modern Windows.
    - cheema33 1y ago
      Example: My company uses MS Teams for meetings. Wine cannot run it reliably.
      - monocasa 1y ago
        Counter example: my windows 10 machine can't play my copy of crysis, but my Ubuntu machine can under wine.
      - ClikeX 1y ago
        To be fair. Neither can my MacBook, and that is an official release.
archargelod 1y ago
I think this name would be confusing. For one - it is for linux, not windows.And it is a subsystem running Windows. So, it should be called Windows Subsystem for Linux, or WSL.

senectus1 1y ago

and with MS making sure you have to sign in with a MS account... i dont really see the point of this.

chii 1y ago
> MS making sure you have to sign in with a MS account if you are capable of running linux, you're capable of working out the various ways to bypass that sign-in "requirement".
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  As a non-coder/engineer Linux user…I’ll admit that’s actually not obvious to me. Linux is trivially easy to run these days. I could probably drop my dad in Mint and he’d assume windows just looks different. Maybe that’s a tad facetious but also ehhhh I could maybe get away with it
- fragmede 1y ago
  But if using hello@example.com as the email, and using F10 and oobe or whateve command you pulled off Google stop working, and then you have to move to more exotic options, like downloading programs to modify disk images to prepare a USB drive to install an LTSP or IoT copy of windows 10 it's all just such a waste of time to do something that should be easy all because someone at Microsoft got on this kick that what they want is more important than what the customer wants. It's so frustrating!
  - GoblinSlayer 1y ago
    You basically need to do that anyway, because defaults are janky.
Asmod4n 1y ago
Only the home version has that issue.

LennyHenrysNuts 1y ago

And I had to come here to find out what it actually was. Why don't project pages ever actually tell you what it is, what it does and how it does it? Half the time it's something like "Plorglewurzle leverages your big data block chain to provide sublinear microservices to Azure Cloud infrastructures" At least this one kind of shows you having to install Windows.

BobbyTables2 1y ago
Agree. Have even seen too many companies whose main product completely avoids such questions. I don’t get it. Must be why I’m not wealthy. I always figured one would have to show people a reason why they should give boat loads of money…
- rbanffy 1y ago
  > Must be why I’m not wealthy. I always figured one would have to show people a reason why they should give boat loads of money… This one hit hard. It turns out Phineas Barnum was right this whole time.
hypfer 1y ago
> Why don't project pages ever actually tell you what it is If it's a good thing with substance, they do. If they don't, don't use it. This usually hints at a broken culture/missing substance. It _can_ also be ineptitude, but that too is not your problem but theirs. You woke up this morning not having the problem this sets out to solve. You can go to sleep and rest easily this night, knowing that you still don't have whatever problem this sets out to solve. If you should one day wake up and notice that you have a problem this could solve, you will find yourself googling for a solution, again side-stepping this whole marketing nonsense.
pipes 1y ago
I was complaining about this sort of thing in another thread.
Hobadee 1y ago
I call this the "marketing website problem". Unfortunately many companies have realized that engineers don't make purchasing decisions. (Mearly suggestions) Rather, C-Suite, who knows nothing about the technical side of things, and everything about the buzzword side, makes the decisions. As a result, companies know that if they just throw a bunch of inflated marketing mumbo-jumbo at the user, while it will turn off every engineer asking "WTF does this actually do and how does it work", some C-Suite will run out and purchase it without asking, then force their entire team to use it because it "produces synergy of the AI block chain and big data cloud APIs while enhancing productivity". Then us Engineers are stuck using it, whether we wanted it or not.

gcr 1y ago

In-place ABI translation is how wine works, what do you mean?

Zardoz84 1y ago

Exactly the same thing of WSL2