[HN Gopher] WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of ...
___________________________________________________________________
WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native
Linux OS
Author : klaussilveira
Score : 312 points
Date : 2025-11-25 12:34 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| andai wrote:
| 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 :)
| userbinator wrote:
| _They are virtualizing it!_
|
| This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications -
| in a VM, using V86 mode.
| tommica wrote:
| > 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.
| pfix wrote:
| 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.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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(tm) 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.
| immibis wrote:
| If you think about it, every process is a VM.
| Krutonium wrote:
| 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!
| cyberax wrote:
| Ok. Can you run WSL inside of it?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Hah! Even better question is can you run it inside WSL?
| jonp888 wrote:
| 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
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 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.
| breppp wrote:
| 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...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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.
| jodoherty wrote:
| 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/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730
| d...
|
| - https://github.com/dockur/windows/blob/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730
| d...
|
| - https://github.com/dockur/windows/blob/c7aac1edcf37a69ff730
| d...
|
| 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.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Most laptops have included Windows 10 or 11 licenses, which are
| valid for this use
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| 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.
| sschueller wrote:
| 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...
| Hasnep wrote:
| 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/doc
| ume...
| braiamp wrote:
| 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.
| swores wrote:
| 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.
| darkwater wrote:
| 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.
| swores wrote:
| From an ethical point of view I completely agree that
| it's predatory, I just don't believe any EU laws exist
| that mean anyone would have a chance of success trying to
| sue over that, I don't believe it to be illegal. And
| while I'm not all-knowing, nor am I someone who knows
| every single relevant law like the back of my hand, my
| opinion is somewhat backed up by the fact that I'm not
| aware of _anyone_ with actual legal knowledge having ever
| suggested this behaviour of Microsoft 's could be
| considered illegal the way you want it to be, it's only
| ever people who are users who think it should be
| considered breach of contract. (And considering how much
| money it would be worth if you could sue MS for this and
| win, if it were even a 50/50 question you'd get lawyers
| trying.)
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| swores wrote:
| One could argue that, and like I just wrote in my reply
| to your sibing comment
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087142) I would
| agree with you with regards to ethics, but it's not a
| valid argument from an actual legal perspective.
|
| I'd love to be proven wrong about this, because I'm not
| blowing smoke up your ass I really do agree with you in
| that I wish MS could and would be sued over this, and
| lose, and have to stop making Windows shit like this. But
| I'm fairly confident that the only possibility would be
| for EU (or individual nations) to write new legislation
| addressing it.
| deaddodo wrote:
| 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.
| slurrpurr wrote:
| Your fault for not letting your drink at the bar get
| chemically analyzed before drinking it
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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.)
| Asmod4n wrote:
| then it would be illegal to use hyper-v, since windows is
| then run under a hypervisor.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| 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-...
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| https://get.activated.win wouldn't be online if microsoft
| cared.
| iljya wrote:
| what is this?
| xeonmc wrote:
| massgrave.dev
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| ... and what is this?
| GranPC wrote:
| 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.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| it is in the name get.activated.win(dows)
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| 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
| venturecruelty wrote:
| >...and the license clearly states you need a valid Windows
| license to use them.
|
| It's a license, not a cop.
| maxloh wrote:
| I am surprised that one of the fetched scripts even hosted on
| Azure.
|
| https://dev.azure.com/massgrave/Microsoft-Activation-
| Scripts......
| compsciphd wrote:
| Is this a new thing? That windows docker images can run a UI?
| It's been a while since I looked at them (we're talking
| 2017-2018?), but back then, one was limited to CLI/Server apps
| without any windows graphical interface.
|
| I'm wondering when it changed? (or perhaps I missed something
| back then)
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Parallels coherence mode in MacOS is similar.
| cromka wrote:
| How about GPU acceleration, for e.g. Affinity?
| gigatexal wrote:
| 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.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Windows is virtualised here.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Works on wine via vulcan/opencl
| j16sdiz wrote:
| > 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.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| 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.
| rbits wrote:
| Who's re-creating an icon? I can only see links to images from
| Wikipedia
| gruez wrote:
| >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 SS Fonts and
| typefaces or Template talk:PD-textlogo for more information.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| 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.
| runsonrum wrote:
| 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.
| jeena wrote:
| 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.
| specproc wrote:
| 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.
| camtarn wrote:
| Java edition can also use Realms. I'm playing on a realm
| using Linux Java edition and the official launcher now.
| Tajnymag wrote:
| What is missing from the unofficial Bedrock launcher?
|
| https://minecraft-linux.github.io/
| Yehia_loay wrote:
| 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!
| terra_nera wrote:
| It really whips the llamas ass ....
|
| This popped into my head before I had a second to do a double
| take.
| phito wrote:
| 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.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > 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.
| mathfailure wrote:
| To pass through a GPU - you'd need an extra GPU then..?
| hedora wrote:
| 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?
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| 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.
| cgfjtynzdrfht wrote:
| I think you are confusing PCI passthrough with enterprise
| IOMMU GPU support that's nowhere to be found in consumer
| GPU:s.
| prmoustache wrote:
| yes
| fsh wrote:
| 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.
| InMice wrote:
| 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
| Hilift wrote:
| 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.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| 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...
| jeena wrote:
| 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.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| 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.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Many creators would like to abandon Windows completely, bud
| Adobe...
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| 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.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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 ms.
|
| 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.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| We have a 365 subscription. I guess that reduces the noise
| quite a lot.
| Telaneo wrote:
| What were the problems she encountered? I'd assume lag or
| inelegance, but that can be fixed by using a native Linux
| solution (i.e. Libreoffice), but I assume you've already
| tried/rejected that for other reasons. What were those in that
| case?
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| Lag was certainly a factor, but there were also weird
| behaviors like visual glitches and UI rendering issues. There
| were a number of intermittent problems that are hard to list
| specifically, as it's been a few months since we tried it.
|
| She is not a power user. Working inside a container running
| Windows just to display MS Word introduces complexity.
| separate file systems, etc. Sometimes the abstraction breaks,
| and you "fall out" of the app and end up staring at a Windows
| environment. It is very confusing for a layperson. On top of
| that, the RAM overhead was significant for her older laptop.
|
| She is a kindergarten teacher. The last thing she can use is
| friction on her laptop.
|
| We didn't try LibreOffice. I'm familiar with it, but the
| learning curve/transition is just too much friction. They
| also share a lot of documents with colleagues. I don't know
| the current state of compatibility between MS Office and
| LibreOffice, but I recall layouts breaking regularly. She
| also has a library of templates originally created in MS
| Office.
| 0134340 wrote:
| I'm not very proficient nor really need office apps in my
| day to day use but I've heard good things about OnlyOffice
| should LibreOffice not meet your needs.
| circuit10 wrote:
| I've used OnlyOffice, the UI is much closer to modern
| Office and generally feels more polished, and the
| compatibility is meant to be better as well
| GaryBluto wrote:
| 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.
| prox wrote:
| 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.
| Jnr wrote:
| 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.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Most things work great. There are some niche things that do
| not work so well. Example: SteamVR,Vive VR Hub, some
| AntiCheat for games.
| rft wrote:
| 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/
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Regarding FOSS VR stack, Unfortunately, WiVRn doesn't
| support Vive Focus Vision.
|
| SteamVR for Linux requires DRM leasing to function and
| many Linux distros, well... window managers/compositors
| do not support this. But yes it can work.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| 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.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| I, for one, use Notepad++ with wine. I'm accustomed to it
| d-lisp wrote:
| 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).
| mlok wrote:
| About games compatibility made possible by Steam, check
| Proton DB : https://www.protondb.com/
| camtarn wrote:
| 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).
| tiahura wrote:
| Office doesn't.
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| 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.
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| codingrightnow wrote:
| 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.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Windows 11 has tabs in the file explorer by default.
| 0134340 wrote:
| So does KDE's Dolphin and many others on Linux. Linux had
| tabs on file explorers well before Explorer did as well
| as virtual desktops, app stores, and a few other things
| that Windows didn't have but later implemented.
| downut wrote:
| I hardly want to run windows apps at all, but I have a garmin
| etrex 32x and I can't for the life of me get garmin windows
| software to run on wine or linux crossover (something to do
| with USB) and there is nothing available on linux that can
| talk to the device. I'd run Windows 10 in a VM but I looked
| (I think?) pretty carefully and valid Windows licenses seem
| to be well over $100, cheaper to use a refurbed office
| desktop.
|
| Someone stomp me down and tell me I'm wrong, please.
| encom wrote:
| Anything that needs a driver isn't going to work. At my last
| job I needed to talk to some motor controllers and BMS
| systems through impressively terrible Windows software using
| proprietary device drivers. I had to keep a Windows partition
| around on my machine for this. I did have limited success
| with QEMU, but I never got it working quite right.
| fsh wrote:
| 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.
| jopsen wrote:
| What is containerized Windows?
| cgfjtynzdrfht wrote:
| It's Windows, in a container.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/virtualization/windowscont...
| torginus wrote:
| For those of us who have used containerized Windows in prod,
| it is its on kind of hell
| torginus wrote:
| 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.
| jstanley wrote:
| 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.
| mikaraento wrote:
| 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)
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| From my personal experience (by feel, not scientific),
| NVIDIA GameStream is way faster than RDP. I used it with
| Sunshine and Moonlight.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Agreed that RDP is very well designed. And we don't have an
| equivalent in Linux or Mac world. All competing protocols
| are a compromise. I am particularly impressed with good
| multi-monitor support in RDP. Competitions has had more
| than a decade to get it right. But I am unaware of any that
| does.
|
| If I connect remotely from a 2 monitor setup, disconnect
| and re-connect from my laptop with just a single display,
| it all magically works. Everything readjusts automatically.
| I don't know of any other remote desktop protocol/tool that
| does this so well.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| 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".
| wtcactus wrote:
| 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).
| torginus wrote:
| 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.
| knollimar wrote:
| wait is it viable to run CAD (specifically autocad/revit)
| in any of these? It's the last thing keeping me on Windows
| fsh wrote:
| Yes, CAD software is perfectly usable via RDP.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Actually with RemoteFX GPU I think DirectX 9 games or
| something would work OK over it.
| Amekedl wrote:
| Care to elaborate regarding tauri? I figured it has matured
| into a fine electron alternative.
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| Not OP, but I recall Tauri greatly overstating their memory
| usage claims. It is ultimately a browser running your
| "app", but just because it's not bundled with your app,
| doesn't make it consume any lesser RAM. And they even
| admitted that their benchmarks were wrong[1].
|
| A lot of claims were also made about how Tauri is magically
| more performant than Electron apps and feels like a native
| app, but not only is this not true, on some platforms like
| Linux, Tauri apps are actually slower than Electron because
| the system webview it uses (generally WebKitGTK) is often
| slower and less optimised than the Chromium build that
| Electron ships with[2].
|
| There's a bunch more claims due to it being "Rust" and all
| the memes that comes with that territory, but all that is
| basically irrelevant since your "app" is basically shitty
| javascript in the end. It's like putting lipstick and
| dressing up a pig, doesn't change the fact that it's still
| a pig.
|
| [1] https://github.com/orgs/tauri-apps/discussions/3162
|
| [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/tauri/comments/1kg5zb8/will_ta
| uri_f...
| venturecruelty wrote:
| I can't believe people will still put in all of this work
| instead of just... using their system's native GUI. Mind-
| boggling.
| SeasonalEnnui wrote:
| I've done both, I prefer embedded web views:
|
| - All the work is done in my high performance backend,
| where I joyfully optimise my hot loops to the assembly
| level. The web view is a thin layer on top.
|
| - HTML and CSS is a joy to work with in comparison to
| many UI toolkits. LLMs are better at supporting a web
| stack.
|
| - The UI zooms/scales, and is accessible with screen
| readers (looking at you, imgui).
|
| - Cross platform with low effort.
|
| IMO you have to be extremely careful not to pull in a
| whole frontend stack. Stay as vanilla as possible, maybe
| alpine.js or tailwind, and I've got hot reload set up so
| the developer productivity loop is tight when editing the
| view.
| mentalgear wrote:
| I can recommend svelte(kit): great API and compiles down
| to just js.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Mostly Tauri claimed their main advantage was smaller app
| sizes since it's using the native WebView. What they didn't
| say is how a bottomless pit it is to try standardizing
| rendering on X different webviews, multiplied by X
| different webview versions (outdated, not updated systems)
| ; so now they have pivoted to shipping their own build-in
| browser ; Competition in open-space is okay but it
| shouldn't be made by only pushing its perceived advantages
| while withholding the systemic disadvantages.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Well yeah. The goal for most of these people is to pad a
| portfolio so they can either get or remain gainfully
| employed. We are in the performative software era. It's not
| about data structures or algorithms anymore, it's all about
| GitHub stars.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| 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
| fsflover wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Won't happen because of remote attestation and integrity
| verification.
| xg15 wrote:
| 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?
| noisem4ker wrote:
| 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
| xg15 wrote:
| 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.
| mathfailure wrote:
| 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
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| This runs a container then virtualizes Windows inside it using
| KVM
| mathfailure wrote:
| As you can see - running the container doesn't work.
| shlip wrote:
| 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.
| 20k wrote:
| 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
| mcny wrote:
| 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.
| 20k wrote:
| 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
| prmoustache wrote:
| Any modern IDE has those functionalities, and most of them
| run on Linux too. I don't think there is anything you have
| shown that warrants sticking to Tortoise Git instead of any
| other IDE.
|
| Also if you don't want to use an IDE Gnome's file manager
| nautilus supports scripts available on right click. This
| would allows you to run git commands from the file manager
| , show the information you need using [YAD](https://yad-
| guide.ingk.se/#_introduction)
| master-lincoln wrote:
| There seem to be some git tools on Linux that integrate with
| some filemanagers e.g.
| https://flathub.org/en/apps/de.philippun1.turtle
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| 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/
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I stand boggled.
| codingrightnow wrote:
| Try git cola.
| nickjj wrote:
| 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?
| pjmlp wrote:
| 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.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| 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
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is basically X Windows, unless I am misunderstanding
| the description.
|
| X Windows server is the part that runs on the client.
|
| Hummingbird nowadays has a different name,
|
| https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/remote-
| access/...
|
| There are also other options like X Win32,
|
| https://www.starnet.com/xwin32/
| aruggirello wrote:
| 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?
| nickjj wrote:
| 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.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| 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.
| xrd wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| Other people mentioned it runs on a VM so it probably won't
| work well for 3d games.
| knollimar wrote:
| isn't there wack anticheat there? Doubt it runs virtualized
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| You can make it work if you spoof the VM's SMBIOS strings and
| rename some device objects so it's not obvious you're running
| in a VM. Plenty of guides on how to do this, eg:
| https://github.com/Scrut1ny/Hypervisor-Phantom
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| 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!
| __jonas wrote:
| 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.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Why not just disable them?
| __jonas wrote:
| Because they constantly get re-enabled, or new ones get
| added, and I don't want to have to fight my OS this hard.
| b3ing wrote:
| I wish VMware ThinApp was still around
| the__alchemist wrote:
| 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.
| exceptione wrote:
| Note that it currently only works with xfreerdp1, so that means
| you share the X11 socket with this program. Although freerdp is
| also available for Wayland, the single app mode (aka RemoteApp
| aka RAILS) reportedly has not been implemented yet on the SDL
| port.
|
| 1. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps/issues/779
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-29 23:01 UTC)