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If you just want to run Linux under Windows, why not CoLinux?

Absolutely. Until you can use Wine to run Cooperative Linux or boot Linux on vmware then the job is only half done.

There are several ways to do this, with varying levels of stability and performance.

QEMU will run Linux, BSDs, and Windows, from either Windows or Linux.
Colinux will run linux from Windows XP. I'm not sure what the latest Fedora Image for it is, but I run a 2.6 kernel based Gentoo build from XP frequently (for that nethack fix).

I'm not sure either is suitable, but i would recommend looking at them, as they are both interesting projects, if not immediately useful to you.

IMHO, dual boot is a pain. I prefer coLinux http://www.colinux.org/
And I think it runs on Linux, too :-)

This article seems a bit late and the screensaver angle makes it useless. I've been running colinux as a service on my windows 2000 box for almost a year. I can apt-get anything from a debian/compatible repository...

where's the news?

Cheers.

I think that a solution with cygwin or colinux would be more elegant in this case.

If this were Cooperative Linux that might be an avenue worth exploring. However, the article describes running Linux under QEMU, which the author admits is "slooooooooowwww."

Or, more accurately, coLinux.

It can already be both. Do check it out - it's quite amazing.

I'd really like a low cost virtualization option so that I could run Linux without rebooting.

You should try Cooperative Linux. From their website, they describe it as:

"Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software."

Need to run Linux at work but corporate policy won't let you? (or plan to install Linux anyway, but need that killer-app for Windows?)...

In the past I've used coLinux for when I have to use Windows.

Personally, I'm more interested in running Windows under Linux.

Do you mean, does it run coLinux? http://www.colinux.org/ I wonder...
This is the best way to try linux on Windows, however, maintain the instabilities and insecurity of Windows...

Linux apps in your Windows environment.

CoLinux

Why does this sound like the old question "Will it run (on) Windows?

Yes, it does run on Windows, but it's tricky to set up. http://www.colinux.org/

there's http://www.colinux.org/, a port of linux to
WinNT 5.x. . . . you can run ELF format linux/x86 binaries on windows with it.

No you can't. The only binary that CoLinux itself runs is the Linux kernel itself, which it actually runs kind of alongside Windows rather than in it: you then run Linux binaries in Linux itself.

As far as any programs you actually run are concerned, the situation is basically identical to having two computers side by side, networked together. Want a Linux shell? You get it by sshing across a virtual network into the virtual Linux box. Want Linux GUI programs on your Windows desktop? You do it by running a Windows X server and launching the Linux applications "remotely".

Look at it in terms of the problem the software solves, and it's clear that CoLinux is much more similar to a "headless VMware" than to anything like WINE.

I know of, for example, no "inverse Wine" to let you, for example, run Linux binaries on Windows

Well, there's http://www.colinux.org/, a port of linux to
WinNT 5.x. This is different to VMWare or cygwin or qemu or bochs or xen, it's more like wine (only it can be based on real sources instead of reverse-engineered APIs) - and yes, you can run ELF format linux/x86 binaries on windows with it.

I've been playing with coLinux today (I run Windows, but the SeaMonkey Project needs nightly Linux builds for users to test, and our resources are pretty limited) and I have to say, it's pretty cool. I recompiled gcc in less than 30 minutes, and it doesn't feel slow at all to use. It's significantly faster than the cygwin process that's used to build Windows versions of SeaMonkey (and Firefox).

I was thinking it might be possible to set up some sort of coLinux-based package which lets people run gnome, openoffice.org, gaim, etc. You can access your host system's data, which means the "where are my mp3s?" type things won't be a problem. You are running native binaries (I'm running an ordinary debian setup), so you get the exact look and feel you'd get if you were running linux. You can install packages just like you would.

At this point, there are some challenges with sound, and you need an X server or vnc client on the Windows host for GUI apps, but the package could take care of all that stuff so users don't have to worry about it.

You could have various levels of transition - ranging from launching apps from the start menu (I can think of easy ways to get that sort of integration), all the way to hiding explorer and using gnome full time, with Windows skinned to look like GNOME for any Windows apps the person still uses. The end result should be users who aren't afraid just because Linux desktops look different, and aren't worried they'll have to hack text files or learn the commandline (things you shouldn't have to do in any decent end-user-oriented distro).

Just a thought.

For those looking for a similar approach, but to take their *Linux* environment with them anywhere, and run it on a Windows platform, I highly recommend coLinux.

Since Windows always has, and always will (well, for the forseeable future) have better and more timely hardware support, having the core OS be Windows tends to have advantages. Also, I can test on IE, and Windows versions of Firefox and Opera, all on the same box.

But my core work, developing on Linux, doesn't need all of that fancy hardware support, I just need the tools. CoLinux lets me run a virtual Linux session under Windows, with networking, and access via X (or VNC).

I take my virtual 2G partition with me between work, home, and elsewhere, with the coLinux binaries there as well, in case I need a quick install on some new Windoiws box.

I would love to see a Knoppix-like ISO for coLinux; plug it into your windows box, and be running a full Linux desktop virtually.

Oh yeah, and the real kicker for me, is performance. It vastly outperforms Linux running under VMWare. And it never has crashed on me (well, except when I removed the networking driver on the Windows side, while coLinux was still running).

Definitely worth checking out.

VmWare is going to continue in the proprietary vein. The F/OSS community has several projects going for it though: QEMU, Bochs, CoLinux, Xen and some others.

I'm really happy with CoLinux. I just take it for granted that I can run Linux under Windows with native performance. At the moment I'm using it to run MySQL, Squid, Apache, Ruby and Samba. It's much better than Cygwin or SFU. Eventually there will be a framebuffer driver for CoLinux and it will be near perfect. For me, however, the Linux stuff I need does not require an X server.

In my opinion coLinux offers the best virtual Linux environment running on Windows. The speed is pretty close to native Linux and they've already started implementing a framebuffer so running X without VNC is going to be reality in the close future.

Of course it does/will.

Hmmmm, I had a minimal Fedora 3 installation on a wonderful coLinux installation, which seldom gets updated packages, but I noticed zlib was updated the other day (via freshrpms, apt-get). Kinda surprised me that something as mundane as a compression library would need updating. But I'm guessing this is why, and several days before the news hits slashdot, awesome.

• A central repository of packages, and a GUI with more than 10000 packages, all installable with 2 clicks.
  
• Automatic upgrading of all these packages.
  
• Uniform interface to install, remove or upgrade all of these packages.
  
• Automatic installation of packages according to file access attempts (auto-apt).
  

• Desktop/network integration (i.e: ftp exploration works just like local file exploration) (and no, this does not work, not even in Windows XP, try copying files from one ftp to another, for example).
  
• Panel applets bringing usefulness to the panel, as well as quick browsers/bookmark lists in the panel (Microsoft copied some of this)
  
• Tabbed command-line consoles
  
• Password-keeping wallets for all applications, allowing the user to remember just one password
  
• Customization of desktop behavior, shortcut keys to basic operations such as minimizing/maximizing, and any other feature in the desktop.
  
• Division of responsibility, window management keeps working even when applications hang.
  
• Search feature in Configuration Manager.
  
• Countless other innovations
  

• The diff/patch tools.
  
• gcc: A single compiler handling the compilation of a huge collection of languages, in a large set of platforms.
  
• xemacs: An environment platform that allows extensions via a dynamic language with seamless on-the-fly compilation of the extension code you write. Also, the most featureful platform out there for this purpose, with powerful macro recorders/editors, customizable key binding, etc.
  
• Languages: Python, Perl, Ruby. Microsoft is still behind in this area, despite its .NET technology, which is less innovation, and more an extension of the Java platform (I would even say, Java done right). Many more languages are Open Source, but I simply don't recall the exact history of other language to tell for sure.
  
• Vast libraries in each of these languages, many of which are filled with technical innovation (i.e: Twisted Matrix, SDL, pygame)
  
• Transparent RPC's for: Python, Ruby, Smalltalk. Microsoft, to the best of my knowledge, does not implement a single transparent RPC. (Transparent means that the server needs not be aware of what objects the client will use, nor does it require any code to explicitly export the object's features to the client, as Microsoft's COM/.NET technologies require).
  

• CoLinux: Modifying the Linux Kernel to run in kernel-mode side-by-side a host operating system.
  
• bochs: Unprivileged, 100% user-space emulation of an entire PC.
  
• qemu: Like bochs, but with dynamic code translation.
  

While I heartily support livecd's for both introducing new users, and for diagnostic/rescue missions, I think coming up with a slick Knoppix-like distribution which uses coLinux, would go a long way.

I've started using coLinux for my development environment, running a full Fedora install under Windows, surprisingly efficiently (blows the doors off of VMWare). A CD that you could stick in, run a program which starts coLinux and a Knoppix distribution, would really let people get the flavour of Linux, without even rebooting.

If you're willing to put a few hours into an install and config that will work reallllllly well, look into coLinux. http://www.colinux.org/

You won't have to dual boot, just run Linux at the same time as Windows. It performs better than virtualization. The only hurdle is getting a desktop, coLinux doesn't have video drivers for X. However, you can just use cygwin and run the desktop as a Windows app. For me, doing app development on Linux and Windows simultaneously, it's the best solution I've found so far. I can get a KDE desktop in 22 seconds (I just timed it) on an old P3 850Mhz laptop with 256MB of ram. All without interrupting my work in Windows.

Cooperative Linux
http://www.colinux.org/

Actually, this might help a bit . You may need to tweak it a bit, though.

Cheers
Isilrion

P.S: Don't worry, I know what you meant.

http://www.colinux.org/
Installed properly, it can be used inside Windows.

Well, since it's possible to map the video memory into a block device (the article says combining it with system memory is inefficient), you can devote that to a linux distro - but you have to run both OSes on the same CPU no matter what. So, you still need some special setup.. like Cooperative Linux

CoLinux is also a very handy package for running linux on windows. It installs linux on a single file on your HD, then runs linux on it, and you can access it throught VNC. So you can have windows and linux sharing the same machine and HD, running at the same time, on different windows. Pretty handy.

http://www.colinux.org

You can use it to run linux from some other partition too. It comes with a version of debian built it, but there are other packages for other distros.

You can also try topologilinux.

http://wwwtopologilinux.com

It's a bundled installation of coLinux and slackware with all bells and whistles.

But of course if he decided to go to Windows you would all have a fit.

Umm, I think we'd think he was off his rocker. I mean, you can run Linux on Windows, but it's pretty hard to see how Linus would benefit from that.

I use colinux for this. It can use any filesystem linux can. I export the filesystem (which is on an image file on an NTFS partition) via Samba.

In native Linux you can mount the filesystem using the loopback device and you can write to it as well since writing to NTFS is supported as long as the filesize doesn't change. The size of the filesystem image will not change if you write to it.

What is this Linux software you speak of? Does it run on Windows?

CoLinux gives decent Linux performance, but your primary desktop has to be Windows.

I heard about a secret project. It concerned the development of a version of Linux that runs smoothly as a task under Windows.

colinux.org

That said, there is no way Linux under Windows would be practical with all the overhead involved.

It's very practical, actually.

If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market

From first hand experience, I can tell you that this is not a really pleasant solution because it doesn't fix the things that are so wrong with Windows: lack of security, poor package and installer management, lousy system management interfaces, and a bad UI.

The long-term implications of such a scenario, I believe, would be essentially to kill Linux. Microsoft's MS-Linux would quickly become the dominant Linux and the company would begin to profit from all the open-source development work that would go into Linux.

First of all, Dvorak's premise is wrong: Linux has enormous numbers of drivers. Hardware "just works" under Linux when it requires cumbersome and flaky driver installations under Windows.

But let's assume the premise were right. So, people have pure Linux PCs and MS-Linux PCs. Well, that means more commercial Linux usage and the ability of software vendors to standardize on the Linux APIs. The consequence? Cutting the cost of shipping Windows out of a PC becomes a more and more attractive proposition and hardware vendors would ship more and more Linux-only PCs.

Microsoft only needs that one driver element to be proprietary for the plan to succeed.

The flaw in that argument is that it is not Microsoft that is creating the drivers, it is the hardware vendors. Anything Microsoft does to make Linux more popular or credible will mean more Linux drivers from hardware vendors.

colinux,NdisWrapper If MS were to do as he has described, it would more likely serve as a migration mechanism and would ultimatly harm Windows dominance in profound ways.

I submit to you all that Dvorak doesnt even try anymore. Industry prognosticator he is not.

http://www.colinux.org/

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

Its called Cooperative Linux, and has been around for quite some time.

www.colinux.org

Yet, suspiciously, the Linux kernel running on my laptop hasn't spontaneously died. Hmm. This Dvorak chap is quite the retard.

Cooperative Linux already provides a way to run Linux under a kind of hardware emulation. If you wanted to run other operating systems then QEMU would be useful, but if you just want a way to run Linux on your Windows desktop then a good answer already exists.

What kind of Acer tablet do you have? My C300 runs my MSDN Windows install just fine, and it also runs SuSE 9.1.

You cold also give CoLinux a try.

Here is what you want: CoLinux

Check out http://www.colinux.org/. "Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively". It is still in early beta dev, but quite impressive.

There's a project in place to do just that. See numerous parent posts for the info. Or, just run Linux and use it today.

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software. In its current condition, it allows us to run the KNOPPIX Japanese Edition on Windows (see Screenshots).

Check out coLinux.

Installation is currently somewhat painful if you don't want to use a provided system image, but progress is definately being made.

Colinux + Xming (or your favorite X server for win32) = Windows and Linux applications running seamlessly side by side, with very little performance loss compared to running Linux natively.

(Don't let the last update of May on the front page fool you, check the snapshots for more recent updates, documentation also updated on the wiki site more often than anywhere else.)

coLinux can be installed as a system service that starts at boot. Put Xming in startup also, and on the Linux side add whatever you want to startup to contact the Xming session and go.

There's no fundamental reason why someone couldn't make a nice package that sets everything up automatically, it's just that so far as I'm aware, nobody has yet done any targetted application setup this way that I am aware of.

Cheers,

Check out coLinux.

Installation is currently somewhat painful if you don't want to use a provided system image, but progress is definately being made.

Colinux + Xming (or your favorite X server for win32) = Windows and Linux applications running seamlessly side by side, with very little performance loss compared to running Linux natively.

(Don't let the last update of May on the front page fool you, check the snapshots for more recent updates, documentation also updated on the wiki site more often than anywhere else.)

coLinux can be installed as a system service that starts at boot. Put Xming in startup also, and on the Linux side add whatever you want to startup to contact the Xming session and go.

There's no fundamental reason why someone couldn't make a nice package that sets everything up automatically, it's just that so far as I'm aware, nobody has yet done any targetted application setup this way that I am aware of.

Cheers,

Check out coLinux.

Installation is currently somewhat painful if you don't want to use a provided system image, but progress is definately being made.

Colinux + Xming (or your favorite X server for win32) = Windows and Linux applications running seamlessly side by side, with very little performance loss compared to running Linux natively.

(Don't let the last update of May on the front page fool you, check the snapshots for more recent updates, documentation also updated on the wiki site more often than anywhere else.)

coLinux can be installed as a system service that starts at boot. Put Xming in startup also, and on the Linux side add whatever you want to startup to contact the Xming session and go.

There's no fundamental reason why someone couldn't make a nice package that sets everything up automatically, it's just that so far as I'm aware, nobody has yet done any targetted application setup this way that I am aware of.

Cheers,

I always thought something like this should be integrated on a live CD with coLinux. Then you could have a local X display running concurrently with a local version of Linux. Need a Windows app? It's there. Need a *nix app? It's there.

Yes, it will.

Do they also include coLinux on the CD? Being able to run Linux from a LiveCD directly onder windows would be a really nice feature me thinks.