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 if Microsoft will take some action to enforce this if these projects become popular.
Edit: This comment is incorrect, see below comment from
doctorpangloss
Open-source Windows and Office activator featuring HWID, Ohook, TSforge, and Online KMS activation methods, along with advanced troubleshooting.
it is in the name get.activated.win(dows)
I don't get it. Is it a VM in a container? Skimming https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/windows I would have interpreted that as a native Windows container, which I vaguely recall being a thing, but that would require an NT host, not Linux.
I remember Windows containers have two modes of operation as a Hyper-V VM and some sort of container-like isolation. I think the reason is that they had to quickly ship "containers" initially and that Windows does not have a kernel backwards compatibility the same way Linux does
The container is a Linux container running a virtual machine inside.
WinApps needs a Windows RDP server to work. Most of the functionality doesn't care where that Windows RDP server is actually running as long as its FreeRDP client can connect to it. The container or libvirt VM options are just ways to accomplish that via virtualization.
I imagine the container part makes it easier to automate QEMU virtualization using bash scripting without worrying about distribution specific differences in the environment. These kinds of scripts become fairly ossified to their environment. Making them run consistently on different Linux distributions is its own adventure unrelated to installing and running Windows, so the containerization eliminates the need for a lot more bash scripting to account for those differences.
The container's bash scripts download the Windows installer ISOs and run them in an unattended mode inside a QEMU VM. The unattended installation is configured to skip activation:
Once the container is running, WinApps configures RDP via some scripts and registry settings exposed into the container via a volume so the container's scripts can copy and run them in the Windows VM:
I haven't seen any of this before, but I think it's a pretty clever use of scripting and containers on top of some fairly mature but hard to use pieces of software.
It is a container in a VM. I'm not even sure what, if anything, the container achieves. But their installation instructions are pretty clear that you start by creating a Windows VM.
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.
Last time I checked I did not agree to be bombarded with ads and have all my data tracked after paying 100+ for a piece of software...
You kinda did...
> By accepting this
agreement and using the software you agree that Microsoft may collect, use, and disclose
the information as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement [...]
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 ad-free. The EU could legislate in various ways that would mean MS had to stop doing so, but they haven't yet and there's no aspect of general contracts law currently that prevents it.
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.
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.
A good chunk of EULAs are partially-completely unenforceable in US contract law as well.
It just doesn’t stop corporations from using them as a scare tactic.
Your fault for not letting your drink at the bar get chemically analyzed before drinking it
Umm actually, you did. You also waived off the right to name your firstborn, and if you disagree, you’ve waived off your right to anything except arbitration. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.
(Friendly reminder that legality, once again, ≠ morality. Victimless crimes can be illegal, and Enron fucking shit up and filing bankruptcy can be legal.)
[deleted]
then it would be illegal to use hyper-v, since windows is then run under a hypervisor.
In that case you are using a network protocol but one could argue you are still accessing the VM in the same local system the OS has been licensed for. It is a remote access from a software perspective but a local access from a user perspective.
no, this system does not work by launching the windows containers on windows mcr.microsoft.com/windows images
it works by using dockurr, which is a great project but a worse way to distribute windows in the sense that it gets installed instead of downloaded and executed
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 buffers, giving you a native experience that works for things like games or heavy apps. It integrates the Linux filesystem on a driver level as well.
Nit: RDP’s roots are more in multi-user windows like Citrix Metaframe than in remote administration. I’ve found it to perform better than the alternatives (remote X11, VNC, Chrome Remote Desktop) for remote GUIs. Nomachine is the only alternative that was close to its performance.
(And before somebody jumps in to correct me - in ancient times X11 performed quite well over the network but modern Linux GUI apps are no longer designed to minimise X11 network traffic)
From my personal experience (by feel, not scientific), NVIDIA GameStream is way faster than RDP. I used it with Sunshine and Moonlight.
Care to elaborate regarding tauri? I figured it has matured into a fine electron alternative.
Windows implementation of RDP is actually very good. You get a degree of responsiveness that is unachievable with neither Linux RDP implementation or any other product (maybe barring Parsec, that also doesn’t allow for Linux hosts).
I know that RDP doesn’t work for gaming, but for anything else (even for CAD), it’s the best thing barring direct access to the machine (or, Parsec).
Actually with RemoteFX GPU I think DirectX 9 games or something would work OK over it.
Yeah, but if the Windows app essentially draws into a GPU texture (which is mapped to a dmabuf buffer in the Linux kernel), you can just grab that texture and send it to the compositor.
The overhead difference is like memcpy vs a very fast SQL database.
wait is it viable to run CAD (specifically autocad/revit) in any of these? It's the last thing keeping me on Windows
Yes, CAD software is perfectly usable via RDP.
That's just progress. Things that used to be hard become easy. Things that used to be impossible become hard.
Hard things become easy when for example it becomes feasible to connect to RDP instead of mucking about at the driver level.
It will be more reliable but less performant.
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".
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.
What windows apps do you need? I switched full time to Ubuntu about a month ago and haven't missed a thing. I thought it would be harder, but after some usability configuration changes like how the mouse scrolls, some browser keyboard settings, system font sizes, and logging into a few accounts it has been snag free. Oh and I did install Microsoft fonts. I hate most Linux fonts. The biggest change really is just getting used to new icons. There are several features in Ubuntu I vastly prefer over windows, like window tabs in the file explorer for instance.
Just anecdata, but the few things I use via Wine have all worked fine. I use yabridge so I can use windows VSTs in my Linux DAW.
Games (if they don't use kernel level anti cheat systems) are all flawless with Proton.
But, I honestly don't have a need to use much other windows only software. Almost everything I need to use has Linux versions, or alternatives that fit my needs.
I still have problems running some VSTs with yabridge (could be fixed in an afternoon, but it's important that people should know that it's not a plug and play experience).
I, for one, use Notepad++ with wine. I'm accustomed to it
Bar a few exceptions (gaminh mostly) you'd have a much better experience switching to native linux apps. Most are really good once you get past the resistance to change. It takes a bit of time to get used to some but once you are set you are no less productive.
I did the switch 2 decades ago and except for my annual 3 weeks of gaming, I never use wine nor do I use or feel the need for a win VM.
Bit of a mixed bag for me. There are a lot of things that work remarkably well, but I have some issues with GPU performance (Cyberpunk 2077 just doesn't run well on Linux for me, despite running great on Windows on the same PC, and GPU-heavy apps like Insta360 Studio and Topaz Denoise run excruciatingly slow or not at all) and some things just don't work (my audio VST plugins work alright, albeit with some bugs about window position handling, but I can't get some of the licensing apps to work under WINE).
Most things work great. There are some niche things that do not work so well.
Example: SteamVR,Vive VR Hub, some AntiCheat for games.
SteamVR works ok, but last I checked it still performs worse than on Windows. If you are feeling adventurous, you can try a FOSS VR stack [1]. It works for Steam games running Proton and when it works it provides better performance. I had some troubles with it, sometimes you need to switch versions or you get some artifacts in games, or some games just don't work at all. Good thing is, switching between FOSS and SteamVR is as simple as launching either first before starting the VR game in Steam.
I guess the Linux VR stack might get a bit of love from Valve for the Steam Frame, so things might improve in the near future.
A lot of them do, but for almost everything there are native alternatives.
I haven't used Wine directly in years, only indirectly through Steam.
What do you use in Windows? It's probably easier starting there and then working out what you can do about it.
Games work great in Proton. Valve has gone all-in on Linux and I suspect before terribly long we'll see more stuff that's SteamOS native, with a compatibility layer for the people who are still using Windows.
I would suspect now that most people either play games which will mostly work okay from Steam, or use stuff that just works in a browser (and I'm kind of lumping Electron apps in with that). Then there are things that are never going to work all that well in Wine or have a native Linux port but which might be worth looking into something else for, like switching from Premiere to Resolve for video editing.
Office doesn’t.
Office is easy to get rid of on a personal level through alternatives.
On a professional level the online office 365 web apps are enough for 99% users. My comoany do not even bother giving us licenses for the desktop apps so linux and windows users are on equal term really.
Except these seamless modes have been broken for many years. Also using a containerized Windows means one doesn't have to fiddle with the insane Windows 11 setup process and TPM issues.
For those of us who have used containerized Windows in prod, it is its on kind of hell
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, but in reverse.
I wonder what the performance is like. Has anyone tried it on CPU / GPU intensive apps like video editing tools?
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?
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.
[dead]
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
How good is it in practice? I've found windows VMs under a Linux host to be frustrating to use, and get poor performances no matter how much resources I throw at it. The clock keeps getting messed up all the time. UI is sluggish.
I now use a dedicated windows laptop in RDP and it is such a better experience better than a VM.
> 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 through. It's what I do on my home lab which runs a 9950X.
Before people raise pitchforks against Linux, this applies there, too, for the record: at work I have a Linux instance just to myself that by any other metric is ridiculously powerful: 64-core Epyc, 96 GB memory, but no iGPU, so remote desktop works very poorly.
To pass through a GPU - you'd need an extra GPU then..?
Also, the last time I checked, many GPUs explicitly detect + block this because they want you to pay for more expensive datacenter versions of the hardware.
Did something change?
I think you are confusing PCI passthrough with enterprise IOMMU GPU support that's nowhere to be found in consumer GPU:s.
when did you check last time? I've been using gpu passthrough for more than the last ten years with different gpus from amd to nvidia to onboard intels. last few years I went back to native windows, because some games refused to run in a vm.
It's pretty good. They use XfreeRDP to remote into the container and display individual windows. This somehow performs a lot better than the GPU emulations of VirtualBox or VMware. I guess Microsoft put some effort into optimizing RDP for Terminal Server applications.
It's definitely the way to go. Been using this setup for years now. Windows rdp server almost never goes down. The occasional "please wait" error when starting a session can be fixed remotely by logging into a 2nd backup user account to unstuck the main account. Gives you windows on mac and linux, lets you choose whatever type hardware for your remote host. Connection outside LAN always wrapped in a tunnel or tailscale
You have minimal to zero leverage of the native Windows debugging, logging, or instrumentation. At best an opaque box with one knob and hopefully it doesn't fail or you will be roaming the countryside learning how to perform correlated packet captures at various levels of crappy obtuse networking. Could be useful for concealing non compliant vulnerable applications from pesky security vulnerability assessment teams. Combine that with the price is right and it is a solid 97% win exceeding performance metrics bonus pool refreshed.
Thought "isn't that just Wine" but no! They are virtualizing it! And integrating them seamlessly with Linux desktop somehow!
Looks pretty cool. I remember playing with something similar in Virtualbox, it had a seamless mode too. It was a bit janky, and I think they removed it recently.
I used it in the old days, to have MSN messenger on Ubuntu :)
Seamless Mode didn't work for anything newer than... XP, I think, as a guest? So it makes sense they'd drop it. Fun while it lasted though!
They are virtualizing it!
This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications - in a VM, using V86 mode.
> This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications - in a VM, using V86 mode.
Oh that is cool! Somehow I imagined that virtualization is more of a "modern" concept, but clearly that is naive thinking.
History
edit
A form of virtualization was first demonstrated with IBM's CP-40 research system in 1967, then distributed via open source in CP/CMS in 1967–1972, and re-implemented in IBM's VM family from 1972 to the present. Each CP/CMS user was provided a simulated, stand-alone computer.
Sometimes it feels like we don't have any actual innovation in CS anymore and it's all from pre 2000s and only made mainstream starting then.
Nit: Do you mean "revisionist history"? ;)
VAX/VMS was originally virtualization of the PDP-11. Windows NT benefited from the loss of MICA/PRISM to virtualize/isolate what was once messy, unreliable, single-tasking, cooperative Windows 3.1/9x to be more isolated, reliable, concurrent, and parallel processing where the fundamental unit of isolated granular execution was the process like UNIX.
DOS mode "VM"s run within Windows 3.x/9x/NT aren't really isolated VMs because they can't replace the DPMI server or launch another instance of (386enh mode) Windows. All they do is semi-isolate real mode and DPMI client apps somewhat to allow multiple instances of them. They can still do bad things™ and don't have full control of the "system" in the way a real system, emulator, or hardware-assisted type-1 or type-2 hypervisor does. They're "virtual" in the way DesqView was "virtual".
Consumerized enterprise virtualization happened in the PC world with VMware Workstation->GSX->Server->ESX->ESXi/vCenter in relatively quick succession around 2001-2005. Xen popped up about the time of ESX (pre-ESXi).
IBM keeps quietly churning out z-based mainframe processors like the z17. Software from the 60's and 70's still runs because they don't do the incompatibility churn that's slowly being more and more adopted in the past 15 years to break everything, all the time, so that nothing "old" that had a long-lasting standard or compatibility ABI that was working will work now. I'm sure it's a lot of work, but churn is also work and especially when it breaks N users. Also, I don't think many folks from the PC-based enterprise server world appreciate the reliability, availability, and service features mainframes have/had.. although vMotion (moving VMs between physical machine linked to shared storage) when it came out was pretty cool.
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…
I'm using MS Office for Work in the browser. But I just live with the shortcomings specifically in PowerPoint where I can't do connectors for example.
She only uses that laptop for MS Office. She did actually use the browser version for a few months, but even that is a significant downgrade compared to native apps.
MS Office and most popular multiplayer games are the 2 biggest hurdles for Linux adoption at the moment.
Many creators would like to abandon Windows completely, bud Adobe...
I tried using Office on the web for a bit, for some reason there's absolutely no way to disable auto-capitalization on the web, luckily I almost never need to use it anyway, and have LibreOffice and Google Workspace instead.
At least use 11 Enterprise (24H2) to mostly avoid the nonstop cacophony of ads. I don't want to hear about 365 or OneDrive or OneNote or Copilot every 3 μs.
Before AppVolumes got bought and became VMware App Volumes, there was Softricity (which became Microsoft App-V).. the app was actually a thin client to talk to a terminal server running the app in a container on a server. Office "installs" in 1 second because it's already "installed" on the app server. The next iteration was AppVolumes streams already installed apps like "Linux snaps" on-demand for Windows to do away with the separate terminal server.
We have a 365 subscription. I guess that reduces the noise quite a lot.
If this works as expect, I love it. I'm assuming the user doesn't need to manually configure the containers etc; it sounds like from the Readme it's low-friction. From a performance and disk space perspective, I'm not thrilled about containers. I think their existence here and in general cuts to a deeper concern we can fix.
Here's what I'd like to see for GPOS software in general. (Win, Linux, Mac, any new ones we get) Minimal or no ABI barriers. You compile software for a given CPU architecture, and it just works on all suitable operating systems. No barriers; no friction. There are some OS specific things people use like file systems, threads, and allocators, but these are usually somewhat general, and are abstracted over by the programming language's standard libraries.
This is a worthwhile goal, and technically is feasible. Within Windows, this generally works pretty well; I think a reasonable goal is to get this working within Linux as a whole. Then cross Win/Linux, and maybe even Mac. OSs should be making our lives easier; not putting up barriers. Especially with the Linux free/OSS mindset. I wish UX and Compatibility were part of the ethos too; I think it's relevant.
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.
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.
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
This is something I have not heard before. Can you please explain your use case a bit more?
What commands do you run using right click? Do you strongly prefer this over a terminal window? You can have aliases if you'd like.
I do virtually everything through tortoisegit, and much prefer it over a CLI. When you right click, you get this:
Clicking the files brings up a diff, which makes pre commit reviews extremely easy. Its a lot faster to add files via an interface like this, rather than using a cli
2. The graphical log feature is pretty indispensable for complex projects. Eg check out this:
This is much nicer than trying to do grok this through the cli for me. Reverting commits, cherrypicking, merges, splicing the history, seeing all the available branches, keeping track of orphaned commits etc, is all super easy
3. If I have to pick between not remembering the CLI commands off the top of my head, and having to memorise and alias a whole bunch of commands to be able to use git fully, I'll pick the former every day. Its the same reason I use an IDE
I wouldn't object to it being a standalone tool, but the nice thing about it being on the context menu is that it doesn't intrude when you don't need it
I don't know how similar it is, but KDE's Dolphin file manager has git integration, I don't know how similar it is to TortoiseGit, it might be worth checking out
You can't re-create an icon to circumvent trademark law.
Using icon to refer to an application is fair use.
I am not sure what's the point of having a public domain icon.
>You can't re-create an icon to circumvent trademark law.
That's not what's happening here. According to wikipedia it's public domain because:
>This logo image consists only of simple geometric shapes or text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain. Although it is free of copyright restrictions, this image may still be subject to other restrictions. See WP:PD § Fonts and typefaces or Template talk:PD-textlogo for more information.
Think of the fact that nobody working on the project even considered that as a helpful warning to not use it.
Even more humorous is the fact they decided to repeat this blunder under every single icon instead of neatly below the table.
Who's re-creating an icon? I can only see links to images from Wikipedia
This is cool, When i looked at this i thought it was just WinBoat, Turn's out, it's not
But of course there isn't a way to run it at the same performance as if windows was installed as the main OS. You would always need some kind of virtualization. Anyways, This is a very cool project. Good luck!
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.
isn't there wack anticheat there? Doubt it runs virtualized
Other people mentioned it runs on a VM so it probably won't work well for 3d games.
Parallels coherence mode in MacOS is similar.
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
As you can see - running the container doesn't work.
I tried to get it set up so I could boot into my Windows partition natively and also boot it in a VM in Qemu on Linux and, what a nightmare.
How about GPU acceleration, for e.g. Affinity?
Works on wine via vulcan/opencl
Probably works the same as any other container that needs such acceleration (plex, CUDA) just pass the device over and the CAPs. There are guides online. Whether or not the windows in a container will use it idk.
Windows is virtualised here.
Lol, at that point I would just run Windows...
What is the threshold where you are basically running Windows, and you have Linux installed just for some internet vanity?
Play games? Run Windows games with Wine/Proton
Coding? VSCode
App? This thing...
But at least I don't own Windows, sheej!
I don't think it's about internet vanity, more about not constantly having advertisements or weird services / AI features pushed into your desktop environment.
I'd love to just run windows if there was a version that didn't have this.
Why not just disable them?
It really whips the llamas ass ....
This popped into my head before I had a second to do a double take.
Well it will work nicely if you have a decently modern setup I guess. But I suspect the experience on a 10+ yo laptop would not be that great.
I would be looking for a solution to run Minecraft official launcher in Linux. It is heavily integrated with Windows extras such as the Microsoft Store.
This is the last holdout to get my children on Linux.
What's missing from the launcher available on Linux? I've been using it for many years, but I have never used in on Windows.
There are two editions: Java and Bedrock. Bedrock is the one that's got Realms, which is the easy way to get servers running.
Have this problem with my brother and nephew, would love to get the lad on Linux, but this is a real obstacle.
Java edition can also use Realms. I'm playing on a realm using Linux Java edition and the official launcher now.
What is missing from the unofficial Bedrock launcher?
Hah! Even better question is can you run it inside WSL?
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
The OS matters, because if it belongs to a mega-corporation, it serves its goals, not yours. Examples: Windows spying on users, iOS not allowing 3rd-party apps without you providing all your private data to Apple.
I've had mixed results with this, recent versions of Adobe in particular gave me trouble.
I've been meaning to try WinBoat, but it's based on the same underlying technology (docker+RDP) so I'm guessing I'll hit the same bugs. I was thinking maybe i could alter the code to launch a different RDP client instead of the default.
Still, if you just need Office, it's a much more integrated setup than you can easily achieve with VMs.
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 if Microsoft will take some action to enforce this if these projects become popular.
Edit: This comment is incorrect, see below comment from doctorpangloss
https://get.activated.win wouldn't be online if microsoft cared.
what is this?
massgrave.dev
... and what is this?
From massgrave.dev, just below the big heading:
Open-source Windows and Office activator featuring HWID, Ohook, TSforge, and Online KMS activation methods, along with advanced troubleshooting.
it is in the name get.activated.win(dows)
I don't get it. Is it a VM in a container? Skimming https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/windows I would have interpreted that as a native Windows container, which I vaguely recall being a thing, but that would require an NT host, not Linux.
I remember Windows containers have two modes of operation as a Hyper-V VM and some sort of container-like isolation. I think the reason is that they had to quickly ship "containers" initially and that Windows does not have a kernel backwards compatibility the same way Linux does
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...
The container is a Linux container running a virtual machine inside.
WinApps needs a Windows RDP server to work. Most of the functionality doesn't care where that Windows RDP server is actually running as long as its FreeRDP client can connect to it. The container or libvirt VM options are just ways to accomplish that via virtualization.
I imagine the container part makes it easier to automate QEMU virtualization using bash scripting without worrying about distribution specific differences in the environment. These kinds of scripts become fairly ossified to their environment. Making them run consistently on different Linux distributions is its own adventure unrelated to installing and running Windows, so the containerization eliminates the need for a lot more bash scripting to account for those differences.
The container's bash scripts download the Windows installer ISOs and run them in an unattended mode inside a QEMU VM. The unattended installation is configured to skip activation:
- https://github.com/dockur/windows/blob/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730d...
- https://github.com/dockur/windows/blob/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730d...
- https://github.com/dockur/windows/blob/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730d...
Once the container is running, WinApps configures RDP via some scripts and registry settings exposed into the container via a volume so the container's scripts can copy and run them in the Windows VM:
- https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps/blob/b4766336903d0cbe...
- https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps/blob/main/oem/RDPApps...
You can do it all yourself too with your own libvirt VM, but it's just more involved:
- https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps/blob/main/docs/libvir...
I haven't seen any of this before, but I think it's a pretty clever use of scripting and containers on top of some fairly mature but hard to use pieces of software.
It is a container in a VM. I'm not even sure what, if anything, the container achieves. But their installation instructions are pretty clear that you start by creating a Windows VM.
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.
Last time I checked I did not agree to be bombarded with ads and have all my data tracked after paying 100+ for a piece of software...
You kinda did...
> By accepting this agreement and using the software you agree that Microsoft may collect, use, and disclose the information as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement [...]
Doesn't make it okay, just legal
https://www.microsoft.com/content/dam/microsoft/usetm/docume...
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 ad-free. The EU could legislate in various ways that would mean MS had to stop doing so, but they haven't yet and there's no aspect of general contracts law currently that prevents it.
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.
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.
A good chunk of EULAs are partially-completely unenforceable in US contract law as well.
It just doesn’t stop corporations from using them as a scare tactic.
Your fault for not letting your drink at the bar get chemically analyzed before drinking it
Umm actually, you did. You also waived off the right to name your firstborn, and if you disagree, you’ve waived off your right to anything except arbitration. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.
(Friendly reminder that legality, once again, ≠ morality. Victimless crimes can be illegal, and Enron fucking shit up and filing bankruptcy can be legal.)
then it would be illegal to use hyper-v, since windows is then run under a hypervisor.
The FPP license does allow local vm access. But if u access it remotely then u need a SA or VDA license. If this thread is legit: https://community.spiceworks.com/t/whats-wrong-or-not-legal-...
In that case you are using a network protocol but one could argue you are still accessing the VM in the same local system the OS has been licensed for. It is a remote access from a software perspective but a local access from a user perspective.
no, this system does not work by launching the windows containers on windows mcr.microsoft.com/windows images
it works by using dockurr, which is a great project but a worse way to distribute windows in the sense that it gets installed instead of downloaded and executed
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 buffers, giving you a native experience that works for things like games or heavy apps. It integrates the Linux filesystem on a driver level as well.
Nit: RDP’s roots are more in multi-user windows like Citrix Metaframe than in remote administration. I’ve found it to perform better than the alternatives (remote X11, VNC, Chrome Remote Desktop) for remote GUIs. Nomachine is the only alternative that was close to its performance.
(And before somebody jumps in to correct me - in ancient times X11 performed quite well over the network but modern Linux GUI apps are no longer designed to minimise X11 network traffic)
From my personal experience (by feel, not scientific), NVIDIA GameStream is way faster than RDP. I used it with Sunshine and Moonlight.
Care to elaborate regarding tauri? I figured it has matured into a fine electron alternative.
Windows implementation of RDP is actually very good. You get a degree of responsiveness that is unachievable with neither Linux RDP implementation or any other product (maybe barring Parsec, that also doesn’t allow for Linux hosts).
I know that RDP doesn’t work for gaming, but for anything else (even for CAD), it’s the best thing barring direct access to the machine (or, Parsec).
Actually with RemoteFX GPU I think DirectX 9 games or something would work OK over it.
Yeah, but if the Windows app essentially draws into a GPU texture (which is mapped to a dmabuf buffer in the Linux kernel), you can just grab that texture and send it to the compositor.
The overhead difference is like memcpy vs a very fast SQL database.
wait is it viable to run CAD (specifically autocad/revit) in any of these? It's the last thing keeping me on Windows
Yes, CAD software is perfectly usable via RDP.
That's just progress. Things that used to be hard become easy. Things that used to be impossible become hard.
Hard things become easy when for example it becomes feasible to connect to RDP instead of mucking about at the driver level.
It will be more reliable but less performant.
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".
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.
What windows apps do you need? I switched full time to Ubuntu about a month ago and haven't missed a thing. I thought it would be harder, but after some usability configuration changes like how the mouse scrolls, some browser keyboard settings, system font sizes, and logging into a few accounts it has been snag free. Oh and I did install Microsoft fonts. I hate most Linux fonts. The biggest change really is just getting used to new icons. There are several features in Ubuntu I vastly prefer over windows, like window tabs in the file explorer for instance.
Just anecdata, but the few things I use via Wine have all worked fine. I use yabridge so I can use windows VSTs in my Linux DAW.
Games (if they don't use kernel level anti cheat systems) are all flawless with Proton.
But, I honestly don't have a need to use much other windows only software. Almost everything I need to use has Linux versions, or alternatives that fit my needs.
I still have problems running some VSTs with yabridge (could be fixed in an afternoon, but it's important that people should know that it's not a plug and play experience).
I, for one, use Notepad++ with wine. I'm accustomed to it
Bar a few exceptions (gaminh mostly) you'd have a much better experience switching to native linux apps. Most are really good once you get past the resistance to change. It takes a bit of time to get used to some but once you are set you are no less productive.
I did the switch 2 decades ago and except for my annual 3 weeks of gaming, I never use wine nor do I use or feel the need for a win VM.
About games compatibility made possible by Steam, check Proton DB : https://www.protondb.com/
Bit of a mixed bag for me. There are a lot of things that work remarkably well, but I have some issues with GPU performance (Cyberpunk 2077 just doesn't run well on Linux for me, despite running great on Windows on the same PC, and GPU-heavy apps like Insta360 Studio and Topaz Denoise run excruciatingly slow or not at all) and some things just don't work (my audio VST plugins work alright, albeit with some bugs about window position handling, but I can't get some of the licensing apps to work under WINE).
Most things work great. There are some niche things that do not work so well. Example: SteamVR,Vive VR Hub, some AntiCheat for games.
SteamVR works ok, but last I checked it still performs worse than on Windows. If you are feeling adventurous, you can try a FOSS VR stack [1]. It works for Steam games running Proton and when it works it provides better performance. I had some troubles with it, sometimes you need to switch versions or you get some artifacts in games, or some games just don't work at all. Good thing is, switching between FOSS and SteamVR is as simple as launching either first before starting the VR game in Steam.
I guess the Linux VR stack might get a bit of love from Valve for the Steam Frame, so things might improve in the near future.
[1] https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/fossvr/envision/
A lot of them do, but for almost everything there are native alternatives.
I haven't used Wine directly in years, only indirectly through Steam.
What do you use in Windows? It's probably easier starting there and then working out what you can do about it.
Games work great in Proton. Valve has gone all-in on Linux and I suspect before terribly long we'll see more stuff that's SteamOS native, with a compatibility layer for the people who are still using Windows.
I would suspect now that most people either play games which will mostly work okay from Steam, or use stuff that just works in a browser (and I'm kind of lumping Electron apps in with that). Then there are things that are never going to work all that well in Wine or have a native Linux port but which might be worth looking into something else for, like switching from Premiere to Resolve for video editing.
Office doesn’t.
Office is easy to get rid of on a personal level through alternatives.
On a professional level the online office 365 web apps are enough for 99% users. My comoany do not even bother giving us licenses for the desktop apps so linux and windows users are on equal term really.
Except these seamless modes have been broken for many years. Also using a containerized Windows means one doesn't have to fiddle with the insane Windows 11 setup process and TPM issues.
For those of us who have used containerized Windows in prod, it is its on kind of hell
What is containerized Windows?
It's Windows, in a container.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...
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, but in reverse.
I wonder what the performance is like. Has anyone tried it on CPU / GPU intensive apps like video editing tools?
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?
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.
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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
How good is it in practice? I've found windows VMs under a Linux host to be frustrating to use, and get poor performances no matter how much resources I throw at it. The clock keeps getting messed up all the time. UI is sluggish.
I now use a dedicated windows laptop in RDP and it is such a better experience better than a VM.
> 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 through. It's what I do on my home lab which runs a 9950X.
Before people raise pitchforks against Linux, this applies there, too, for the record: at work I have a Linux instance just to myself that by any other metric is ridiculously powerful: 64-core Epyc, 96 GB memory, but no iGPU, so remote desktop works very poorly.
To pass through a GPU - you'd need an extra GPU then..?
Also, the last time I checked, many GPUs explicitly detect + block this because they want you to pay for more expensive datacenter versions of the hardware.
Did something change?
I think you are confusing PCI passthrough with enterprise IOMMU GPU support that's nowhere to be found in consumer GPU:s.
when did you check last time? I've been using gpu passthrough for more than the last ten years with different gpus from amd to nvidia to onboard intels. last few years I went back to native windows, because some games refused to run in a vm.
It's pretty good. They use XfreeRDP to remote into the container and display individual windows. This somehow performs a lot better than the GPU emulations of VirtualBox or VMware. I guess Microsoft put some effort into optimizing RDP for Terminal Server applications.
It's definitely the way to go. Been using this setup for years now. Windows rdp server almost never goes down. The occasional "please wait" error when starting a session can be fixed remotely by logging into a 2nd backup user account to unstuck the main account. Gives you windows on mac and linux, lets you choose whatever type hardware for your remote host. Connection outside LAN always wrapped in a tunnel or tailscale
You have minimal to zero leverage of the native Windows debugging, logging, or instrumentation. At best an opaque box with one knob and hopefully it doesn't fail or you will be roaming the countryside learning how to perform correlated packet captures at various levels of crappy obtuse networking. Could be useful for concealing non compliant vulnerable applications from pesky security vulnerability assessment teams. Combine that with the price is right and it is a solid 97% win exceeding performance metrics bonus pool refreshed.
Thought "isn't that just Wine" but no! They are virtualizing it! And integrating them seamlessly with Linux desktop somehow!
Looks pretty cool. I remember playing with something similar in Virtualbox, it had a seamless mode too. It was a bit janky, and I think they removed it recently.
I used it in the old days, to have MSN messenger on Ubuntu :)
Seamless Mode didn't work for anything newer than... XP, I think, as a guest? So it makes sense they'd drop it. Fun while it lasted though!
They are virtualizing it!
This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications - in a VM, using V86 mode.
> This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications - in a VM, using V86 mode.
Oh that is cool! Somehow I imagined that virtualization is more of a "modern" concept, but clearly that is naive thinking.
History edit
A form of virtualization was first demonstrated with IBM's CP-40 research system in 1967, then distributed via open source in CP/CMS in 1967–1972, and re-implemented in IBM's VM family from 1972 to the present. Each CP/CMS user was provided a simulated, stand-alone computer.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
Sometimes it feels like we don't have any actual innovation in CS anymore and it's all from pre 2000s and only made mainstream starting then.
Nit: Do you mean "revisionist history"? ;)
VAX/VMS was originally virtualization of the PDP-11. Windows NT benefited from the loss of MICA/PRISM to virtualize/isolate what was once messy, unreliable, single-tasking, cooperative Windows 3.1/9x to be more isolated, reliable, concurrent, and parallel processing where the fundamental unit of isolated granular execution was the process like UNIX.
DOS mode "VM"s run within Windows 3.x/9x/NT aren't really isolated VMs because they can't replace the DPMI server or launch another instance of (386enh mode) Windows. All they do is semi-isolate real mode and DPMI client apps somewhat to allow multiple instances of them. They can still do bad things™ and don't have full control of the "system" in the way a real system, emulator, or hardware-assisted type-1 or type-2 hypervisor does. They're "virtual" in the way DesqView was "virtual".
Consumerized enterprise virtualization happened in the PC world with VMware Workstation->GSX->Server->ESX->ESXi/vCenter in relatively quick succession around 2001-2005. Xen popped up about the time of ESX (pre-ESXi).
IBM keeps quietly churning out z-based mainframe processors like the z17. Software from the 60's and 70's still runs because they don't do the incompatibility churn that's slowly being more and more adopted in the past 15 years to break everything, all the time, so that nothing "old" that had a long-lasting standard or compatibility ABI that was working will work now. I'm sure it's a lot of work, but churn is also work and especially when it breaks N users. Also, I don't think many folks from the PC-based enterprise server world appreciate the reliability, availability, and service features mainframes have/had.. although vMotion (moving VMs between physical machine linked to shared storage) when it came out was pretty cool.
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…
I'm using MS Office for Work in the browser. But I just live with the shortcomings specifically in PowerPoint where I can't do connectors for example.
She only uses that laptop for MS Office. She did actually use the browser version for a few months, but even that is a significant downgrade compared to native apps.
MS Office and most popular multiplayer games are the 2 biggest hurdles for Linux adoption at the moment.
Many creators would like to abandon Windows completely, bud Adobe...
I tried using Office on the web for a bit, for some reason there's absolutely no way to disable auto-capitalization on the web, luckily I almost never need to use it anyway, and have LibreOffice and Google Workspace instead.
At least use 11 Enterprise (24H2) to mostly avoid the nonstop cacophony of ads. I don't want to hear about 365 or OneDrive or OneNote or Copilot every 3 μs.
Before AppVolumes got bought and became VMware App Volumes, there was Softricity (which became Microsoft App-V).. the app was actually a thin client to talk to a terminal server running the app in a container on a server. Office "installs" in 1 second because it's already "installed" on the app server. The next iteration was AppVolumes streams already installed apps like "Linux snaps" on-demand for Windows to do away with the separate terminal server.
We have a 365 subscription. I guess that reduces the noise quite a lot.
If this works as expect, I love it. I'm assuming the user doesn't need to manually configure the containers etc; it sounds like from the Readme it's low-friction. From a performance and disk space perspective, I'm not thrilled about containers. I think their existence here and in general cuts to a deeper concern we can fix.
Here's what I'd like to see for GPOS software in general. (Win, Linux, Mac, any new ones we get) Minimal or no ABI barriers. You compile software for a given CPU architecture, and it just works on all suitable operating systems. No barriers; no friction. There are some OS specific things people use like file systems, threads, and allocators, but these are usually somewhat general, and are abstracted over by the programming language's standard libraries.
This is a worthwhile goal, and technically is feasible. Within Windows, this generally works pretty well; I think a reasonable goal is to get this working within Linux as a whole. Then cross Win/Linux, and maybe even Mac. OSs should be making our lives easier; not putting up barriers. Especially with the Linux free/OSS mindset. I wish UX and Compatibility were part of the ethos too; I think it's relevant.
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.
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
This is something I have not heard before. Can you please explain your use case a bit more?
What commands do you run using right click? Do you strongly prefer this over a terminal window? You can have aliases if you'd like.
I do virtually everything through tortoisegit, and much prefer it over a CLI. When you right click, you get this:
https://i.postimg.cc/hG4g8pjp/tgit.png
Which gives you basically everything you could ever possibly want. My main use cases for it vs a terminal interface are:
1. When you commit, you get this:
https://i.postimg.cc/90YJBtz1/boaty.png
Clicking the files brings up a diff, which makes pre commit reviews extremely easy. Its a lot faster to add files via an interface like this, rather than using a cli
2. The graphical log feature is pretty indispensable for complex projects. Eg check out this:
https://i.postimg.cc/qRb76Wxj/godot-mergy.png
This is much nicer than trying to do grok this through the cli for me. Reverting commits, cherrypicking, merges, splicing the history, seeing all the available branches, keeping track of orphaned commits etc, is all super easy
3. If I have to pick between not remembering the CLI commands off the top of my head, and having to memorise and alias a whole bunch of commands to be able to use git fully, I'll pick the former every day. Its the same reason I use an IDE
I wouldn't object to it being a standalone tool, but the nice thing about it being on the context menu is that it doesn't intrude when you don't need it
I don't know how similar it is, but KDE's Dolphin file manager has git integration, I don't know how similar it is to TortoiseGit, it might be worth checking out
https://apps.kde.org/dolphin_plugins/
There seem to be some git tools on Linux that integrate with some filemanagers e.g. https://flathub.org/en/apps/de.philippun1.turtle
Try git cola.
I stand boggled.
> Icon in the Public Domain.
You can't re-create an icon to circumvent trademark law.
Using icon to refer to an application is fair use.
I am not sure what's the point of having a public domain icon.
>You can't re-create an icon to circumvent trademark law.
That's not what's happening here. According to wikipedia it's public domain because:
>This logo image consists only of simple geometric shapes or text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain. Although it is free of copyright restrictions, this image may still be subject to other restrictions. See WP:PD § Fonts and typefaces or Template talk:PD-textlogo for more information.
Think of the fact that nobody working on the project even considered that as a helpful warning to not use it.
Even more humorous is the fact they decided to repeat this blunder under every single icon instead of neatly below the table.
Who's re-creating an icon? I can only see links to images from Wikipedia
This is cool, When i looked at this i thought it was just WinBoat, Turn's out, it's not But of course there isn't a way to run it at the same performance as if windows was installed as the main OS. You would always need some kind of virtualization. Anyways, This is a very cool project. Good luck!
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.
isn't there wack anticheat there? Doubt it runs virtualized
Other people mentioned it runs on a VM so it probably won't work well for 3d games.
Parallels coherence mode in MacOS is similar.
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
As you can see - running the container doesn't work.
I tried to get it set up so I could boot into my Windows partition natively and also boot it in a VM in Qemu on Linux and, what a nightmare.
How about GPU acceleration, for e.g. Affinity?
Works on wine via vulcan/opencl
Probably works the same as any other container that needs such acceleration (plex, CUDA) just pass the device over and the CAPs. There are guides online. Whether or not the windows in a container will use it idk.
Windows is virtualised here.
Lol, at that point I would just run Windows...
What is the threshold where you are basically running Windows, and you have Linux installed just for some internet vanity?
Play games? Run Windows games with Wine/Proton Coding? VSCode App? This thing...
But at least I don't own Windows, sheej!
I don't think it's about internet vanity, more about not constantly having advertisements or weird services / AI features pushed into your desktop environment.
I'd love to just run windows if there was a version that didn't have this.
Why not just disable them?
It really whips the llamas ass ....
This popped into my head before I had a second to do a double take.
Well it will work nicely if you have a decently modern setup I guess. But I suspect the experience on a 10+ yo laptop would not be that great.
I would be looking for a solution to run Minecraft official launcher in Linux. It is heavily integrated with Windows extras such as the Microsoft Store.
This is the last holdout to get my children on Linux.
What's missing from the launcher available on Linux? I've been using it for many years, but I have never used in on Windows.
There are two editions: Java and Bedrock. Bedrock is the one that's got Realms, which is the easy way to get servers running.
Have this problem with my brother and nephew, would love to get the lad on Linux, but this is a real obstacle.
Java edition can also use Realms. I'm playing on a realm using Linux Java edition and the official launcher now.
What is missing from the unofficial Bedrock launcher?
https://minecraft-linux.github.io/
I wish VMware ThinApp was still around
Ok. Can you run WSL inside of it?
Hah! Even better question is can you run it inside WSL?
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
The OS matters, because if it belongs to a mega-corporation, it serves its goals, not yours. Examples: Windows spying on users, iOS not allowing 3rd-party apps without you providing all your private data to Apple.
I've had mixed results with this, recent versions of Adobe in particular gave me trouble.
I've been meaning to try WinBoat, but it's based on the same underlying technology (docker+RDP) so I'm guessing I'll hit the same bugs. I was thinking maybe i could alter the code to launch a different RDP client instead of the default.
Still, if you just need Office, it's a much more integrated setup than you can easily achieve with VMs.
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