WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

by klaussilveira • 8 months ago

342 183 8 months ago

andai• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

They are virtualizing it!

This is incidentally how Windows 386-9x ran DOS applications - in a VM, using V86 mode.

tommica• 8 months ago

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.

Krutonium• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

Ok. Can you run WSL inside of it?

RealityVoid• 8 months ago

Hah! Even better question is can you run it inside WSL?

jonp888• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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...

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_• 8 months ago

Most laptops have included Windows 10 or 11 licenses, which are valid for this use

BlaDeKke7• 8 months ago

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.

kachapopopow3• 8 months ago

https://get.activated.win wouldn't be online if microsoft cared.

iljya• 8 months ago

what is this?

Nextgrid5• 8 months ago

Microsoft doesn't care if a home or hobbyist user uses this, because enforcing the license against such a user is not worth it as the payout wouldn't even cover their own effort/lawyers.

Microsoft may absolutely care if you use this at work (even by accident, by bringing your personal machine to the office) since that's where they can collect a decent amount of money for a license breach.

doctorpangloss• 8 months ago

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

venturecruelty3• 8 months ago

...and the license clearly states you need a valid Windows license to use them.

It's a license, not a cop.

maxloh• 8 months ago

I am surprised that one of the fetched scripts even hosted on Azure.

https://dev.azure.com/massgrave/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts......

compsciphd• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

Parallels coherence mode in MacOS is similar.

darthwalsh• 8 months ago

I really liked using parallels, but when I got my apple silicon MacBook it was too much headache trying to get apps to compile on ARM. I meant to look into x86 VMs but it was experimental last I looked.

cromka3• 8 months ago

How about GPU acceleration, for e.g. Affinity?

gigatexal• 8 months ago

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.

eptcyka2• 8 months ago

Windows is virtualised here.

cromka3• 8 months ago

It should work just fine with Intel GPUs at least

BoredPositron• 8 months ago

Works on wine via vulcan/opencl

j16sdiz• 8 months ago

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.

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

Who's re-creating an icon? I can only see links to images from Wikipedia

gruez2• 8 months ago

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.

queenkjuul• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

jeena2• 8 months ago

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.

specproc2• 8 months ago

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.

Tajnymag• 8 months ago

What is missing from the unofficial Bedrock launcher?

https://minecraft-linux.github.io/

Yehia_loay• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

It really whips the llamas ass ....

This popped into my head before I had a second to do a double take.

phito• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

mathfailure3• 8 months ago

To pass through a GPU - you'd need an extra GPU then..?

fsh3• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

BlaDeKke7• 8 months ago

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…

jeena2• 8 months ago

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.

BlaDeKke7• 8 months ago

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.

yonatan80704• 8 months ago

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-resistor3• 8 months ago

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.

BlaDeKke7• 8 months ago

We have a 365 subscription. I guess that reduces the noise quite a lot.

Telaneo• 8 months ago

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?

BlaDeKke7• 8 months ago

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.

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

SapporoChris2• 8 months ago

Most things work great. There are some niche things that do not work so well. Example: SteamVR,Vive VR Hub, some AntiCheat for games.

MattPalmer1086• 8 months ago

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.

mlok• 8 months ago

About games compatibility made possible by Steam, check Proton DB : https://www.protondb.com/

camtarn2• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

Office doesn’t.

ErroneousBosh2• 8 months ago

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.

prmoustache6• 8 months ago

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.

codingrightnow2• 8 months ago

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.

downut• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

fsh3• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

What is containerized Windows?

torginus3• 8 months ago

For those of us who have used containerized Windows in prod, it is its on kind of hell

torginus3• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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)

ErroneousBosh2• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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).

Amekedl• 8 months ago

Care to elaborate regarding tauri? I figured it has matured into a fine electron alternative.

venturecruelty3• 8 months ago

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.

forgetbook• 8 months ago

Let's assume good intent and that the problem came up without foreknowledge of the solution (which I think is endemic whether or not it is the case here)

How would you reccomend someone discover/decide is faster to learn/learn/implement existing solutions?

I'm asking because I'm currently in my "cambrian explosion" phase of homelabbing, so implementing that loop for myself personally will pay dividends.

tonyhart7• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

Won't happen because of remote attestation and integrity verification.

xg152• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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

xg152• 8 months ago

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.

joseda-hg• 8 months ago

Just for completeness sake, you can do native docker on windows on a windows host

Just no cross Kernel Linux on Windows (Unless passing over WSL) or Windows On Linux (Unless you virtualize in other ways and use that)

https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/windows#:~:text=How%20to%...

mathfailure3• 8 months ago

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

yonatan80704• 8 months ago

This runs a container then virtualizes Windows inside it using KVM

mathfailure3• 8 months ago

As you can see - running the container doesn't work.

shlip• 8 months ago

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.

20k3• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

20k3• 8 months ago

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

master-lincoln• 8 months ago

There seem to be some git tools on Linux that integrate with some filemanagers e.g. https://flathub.org/en/apps/de.philippun1.turtle

yonatan80704• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

I stand boggled.

codingrightnow2• 8 months ago

Try git cola.

nickjj2• 8 months ago

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?

pjmlp2• 8 months ago

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.

hypercube332• 8 months ago

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

aruggirello• 8 months ago

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?

nickjj2• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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• 8 months ago

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.

gruez2• 8 months ago

Other people mentioned it runs on a VM so it probably won't work well for 3d games.

knollimar3• 8 months ago

isn't there wack anticheat there? Doubt it runs virtualized

d3Xt3r2• 8 months ago

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

BrouteMinou2• 8 months ago

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!

__jonas2• 8 months ago

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.

BrouteMinou2• 8 months ago

Why not just disable them?

b3ing• 8 months ago

I wish VMware ThinApp was still around

the__alchemist• 8 months ago

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.

vecdot• 8 months ago

Just some anecdata, I had a poor experience with this project.

My setup used a qemu vm with gpu passthrough. I set the correct group policy settings to force the RDP host to use the vfio gpu.

Compared to looking glass (looking-glass.io), winapps was unusably slow. Beyond that, I experienced app-breaking UI glitches in the Adobe CC tools.

Love the concept, but in my experience this needs some more time to bake.

exceptione• 8 months ago

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

WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

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