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Announcing Cooperative Linux
evilmf writes "Well... I was on my daily "relaxing" read of the LKML when I've found an interesting announce about "Cooperative Linux", in this message from Dan Aloni. It allows you to run Linux on an unmodified Win2000/XP system, just launching another app. Dan says that Cooperative Linux is 'is stable enough (on some common hardware configurations) for running a fully functional KNOPPIX/Debian system on Windows,' and provides some screenshots in the project homepage."
Way back when I wanted to try linux. (now 2-3 years ago) I searched far and away to find this ability, because my dad would have gone bonkers should I have installed/booted another OS.
I get the question quite alot. "Can linux run in Windows"... To which I must roll my eyes and explain that it's another OS.
This is going to be very helpful in convincing people to run linux.
I can just picture myself booting knoppix to make my (Anti-PowerPoint) presentations at school.
Gr8 Stuff!
Well this is definitely Really Neat, after reading their homepage, I see that In its current condition, it allows us to run the KNOPPIX Japanese Edition on Windows. Unfourtunately as far as I can tell, that's all it can run without modification.
Also, coLinux currently lacks documentation.
If you don't speak Japenese, you might have some difficulties using this software to it's fullest.
Cygwin can't directly run linux apps. Sure, you can port apps to cygwin, but it's not the same.
Hier staat een stukje tekst.
If you notice, the X Server in use is actually Cygwin/XFree86 rather than something built in to this system. The actual system runs in console mode only, and thanks to the flexibility of X, allows apps run in the console to connect back to any X server running on the machine.
The point is, if you can find a rootless X server for MS Windows, you can do so. The only one I'm aware of is eXceed (although I don't keep up with them because I have no need for them). It's commercial, but is usually cheaper or free through a university or college.
Because the kernel has been ported directly onto the Windows API, this means that the kernel looks like a Windows program, yet is actually an encapsulated Linux system. This means that you can use whatever filesystem you wish. How they intend to solve the issue of getting data in and out of the encapsulated OS, I don't know - they aren't very clear on the website.
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According to the website, they've written special core drivers for the host OS which modify the way the host OS receives notifications from the hardware - to make the long story short, it allows both OSes to coexist peacefully and run at a decent speed as well.
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If you have a look at the roadmap you will see that are planning to implement a frame-buffer device to replace the need to use Cygwin/XFree86. I wish them good luck.
Cygwin can't run a lot of Linux apps directly. Most of the time they need porting, because libraries are not the same. Both try to be POSIX complaint, but both aren't, so the work is usually fairly minimal, but it's still work to be done. CoLinux allows it to all happen transparently with no source code changes. As such, it's much more useful.
Windows Services for UNIX also suffers from the same problem, it also tries to be POSIX complaint, but its POSIX defficiencies match neither Linux nor Cygwin.
Cygwin/XFree86 can be run rootless, and even using Windows as a WM for better integration.
From the Cygwin bash prompt, launch:
XWin -multiwindow &
There is a startxwin.bat that does that and that is bundled with Cygwin/XFree86.
My understanding (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm mistaken!) is that cygwin provides a set of Win32 libraries that provide reimplementations of Linux functions that are necessary for a Linux app to run. Essentially, Cygwin is a platform that your app can be ported to (generally by simply recompiling), that happens to run under Windows.
What we're talking about with coLinux is the ability to run native Linux binaries as is with no need for recompilation.
*Release Name: 0.5.1-2.4.24
Notes:
This is a very preliminary source-only release.
It is mostly for peer review, but with some effort it can be compiled and run.
Please note that Cooperative Linux is not yet stable on some processors and hardware configurations.*
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The newest version of cygwin/x11 http://www.cygwin.com/xfree/ can run in both rootless mode and multiwindow mode. The above comments are outdated. (I'm running kde programs from kde-cygwin right now)
As you can see on this screenshot it uses a virtual networking device, just like VMWare and User Mode Linux do. From the network POV, the guest and host OS are two different systems. The OS that recieves data you send to 127.0.0.1 is the same you sent it from.
I'll second that. I installed SFU to try it out, and found it to be so bad as to be endlessly entertaining. The high points of my interaction with it were this (the first line indicates my discovery that tab completion didn't work):... and the time I typed
Good times, good times. Also it broke cygwin's emacs-style line editing (presumably by changing some terminal-related DLL) and WinCVS (by setting EDITOR=vi systemwide). Fortunately both of these problems went away when I uninstalled it.