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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."
It will probably look better than native Linux because of the better fonts in Windows.
What I want to know is, will it let me do 'dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/disk.img' on windows (which cygwin doesn't allow)
Windows 2000's horribly broken floppy support is *really* annoying.
You could almost get away with this using VMware, but now with this Cooperative Linux project, it doesn't matter anymore!
If this gets the attention that I think it deserves, this could literally shake apart the entire foundation of the folks who continue to decry Linux. Now a savvy admin who wants to use the Linux versions of Windows crapware can do so, without reinstalling the OS and incurring the wrath of the Microsofties. He gets the best of both worlds: high-quality free software running on top of the "sanctioned" OS. The only drawback to this thing, IMO, is that it may stifle the efforts of people who are trying to port some of the more sophisticated Linux apps to Windows, and may simply give up when they hear that because of this, no porting is required. But I doubt that will be a major issue.
Here's to hoping this project goes somewhere!
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
people who are trying to port some of the more sophisticated Linux apps to Windows, and may simply give up when they hear that because of this, no porting is required
Look at it the other way : if great linux apps are not ported to windows, but instead are delivered with an easy install of colinux+a small distro (the keyword here will be easy !) then more people will learn to know linux. And one day perhaps install it as 2nd OS on their machine, from which the step to primary OS is a small one !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
When I wan't to use *nix tools under Windows I've always trusted Cygwin, but I can see how this project can provide a good alternative to Cygwin XFree86 as suggested in the roadmap. This could also provide an excellent solution for developers to test interoperability between Internet Explorer and Linux webservers - especially if they are limited to one computer. It could also be used to educate people on using Linux, it is a perfect match with Knoppix in this respect.
Wine developers could use this compare apps running natively and those running under wine side-by-side.
I spent about 20 hours trying to get my NTFS partition on my new toshiba laptop (Has XP) in some kind of order to run NTFSresize, but I couldnt I finally bailed and got my hands on a copy of Partition Magic to resize it. I looked around for things to do this, I cant rember the names now, but there used to be a version that would do this years ago. I finally repartitioned and installed Fedora.
I wish I would have come accross this aboput 2 damm weeks ago.
Crapware is the issue here. You do not need help setting your system clock. Bonzai (sp?) Buddy is not your friend. Real is not a good streaming media player. If you need help filling in web forms, use a browser that can do it for you! You do not need to sell your soul to some marketing devil in order to download music. $40 is not a bargain on CD burning software, nor is it a bargain on a good text editor. There are in fact decent mail-readers that won't bork your system and aren't spyware (cough *eudora* cough). I could go on, but you get the picture.
Users of Windows, you have nothing to lose but your chains!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When you send data to 127.0.0.1, which OS picks it up? This boggles my mind.
If this ever becomes stable and useful, OEM's who now have contracts with MS that requires them to pay so much per box to MS whether or not Windows is installed can now start providing Windows + a Linux distribution of choice, at the factory as an option.
The can advertise their box as coming with hundreds of free software programs by throwing in a knoppix cd.
Best of both worlds for the OEMs
We've had Slashdot stories about how many operating systems someone has got on one machine (by multi-booting).
:-)
We probably need a sweepstake for predicting when Slashdot will have the story on how many operating systems have been run virtually on one machine.
Linux running vmWare'd Windows which in turn is running a Debian distro under coLinux, which in turn is running Fedora as a user-mode Linux instance, in turn running FreeBSD as a Xen virtual machine instance... oh, the horrors
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
By constantly switching the machine's state between the host OS state and and the coLinux kernel state, coLinux is given full control of the physical machine's MMU (i.e, paging and protection) in its own specially allocated address space, and is able to act just like a native kernel, achieving almost the same performance and functionality that can be expected from a regular Linux which could have ran on the same machine standalone.
Since coLinux uses the same binary format for user-space executables as native Linux, coLinux can load and run an existing unmodified Linux distribution concurrently with the host OS.
Right on. Now, what about the hard drive? How are we mounting a non-Redmond volume? Can my hip-pocket 2.6.x kernel dip into that NTFS volume safely?
From the "roadmap" page:
Hmmm. Cygwin lives, apparently.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think the easiest setup would be if you could emulate linux apps in a window without having to boot up the whole disto. either way I think it will be more of a good thing for OSS than Linux because most users will think of linux as just a program that allows them to run OSS software.
According to the web site, the architecture of the software that makes this all possible is very portable and could be ported to Solaris, for example , allowing the running of Linux/Sparc on top of it, at full speed. I would love to see this ported to OS X. I love my powerbook and I like OS X, but running linux at the same time would be a huge benefit for me. I'll be following this project closely.
Emulation and virtualization are the coolest technologies I've ever seen.
Does it runs wine ?
...
Because some people want wine, so I wonder if it possible to run wine under colinux.
And, wait, what about colinux under wine ?
Ploum.net.
You can already run many, many apps that were written for linux by using Cygwin. As long as the program is userspace, it can usually just be compiled for cygwin. This has the advantage of producing a windows binary and is pretty speedy. I've got KDE and all its applications running just great in cygwin on a Windows 2000 platform. They have XFree86 that you can use, but since I already owned a copy of Exceed, I can just use that.
We all know how Windows assumes it is the only OS installed, when dealing with things like disk partitions, MBR's etc. How does the Windows NT kernel like sharing Ring 0 with Linux?
:)
That should be no problem. Vmware already locks partitions or even serial and USB devices for it's own use. Obviously you cannot share these partitions or devides with both operating systems, but one at a time is no problem at all.
You have gone from experimental boxes only, to dual booting to Live CD's to try Linux out (very slow...)
I don't know about really slow. CDROM are definately not _that_ slow anymore. My Dell laptop has no problem at all running knoppix, including sound, firewire, networking, usb support. As long as you have enough memory (256 at least, 512 mb runs great) it is not slow after startup either. And compared with a complete installation of linux it takes a lot less time. Upgrading is easy too
If a linux fan wants to show a Windows user what its all about then they can hopefully download one EXE and go.
That I must agree with. It would take a bit of pain out of that process. And they can still keep their freakin' MSN messenger running in the background.
Anyone think redmond will allow this to gain a significant user base? Or will they do an XBox and nobble it with a bug fix, where the bug is defined as "runs linux"
I know which way I'm betting...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
My dad would have done the same - so I didn't tell him. I made lilo wait for 2 seconds at bootup, no prompt - he never noticed the delay (or the small decrease in the size of his hard disk ;-)) and all I had to do was press L-Shift "linux" and I was away.
It was extremely useful later on when I had to recover some data for him...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Judging by your mod points, there are some rich crack dealers on the street right now.
Explorer is horrible at doing what it should do (besides surfing the web which it doesn't do right either thanks to flubbed standards). It can't do tabbed browsing (konqueror), you can't split the window into multiple frames to make ftp'ing and file management easier (konqueror), if you visit a website you can't go recursively up the website's root tree (konqueror) among many other things.
I guess it's not really fair since windows is so far behind at this point. MacOS and KDE both support better features for file management and web browsing than Explorer does. Just wait until Longhorn is out I guess, by then Microsoft will have reaped the other apps' harvests and make it look new by painting it a different color.
By the way, you make alot of suppositions but have zero facts backing you up. Your opinion is pure conjecture.
Perhaps the one thing Windows does much better than Linux is graphical file management. Windows/Internet Explorer provides a reasonable interface to manage files, get previews, sort, find, etc. KDE and Gnome both try to provide these same services, but they are for the most part half baked
Excuse me?
Have you used a recent KDE desktop lately?
Sorry, but your assertion that it's "half baked" really leaves some room for laughter.
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!
Now, that's done, I feel much better. I absolutely *LOVE* KDE 3.x on RH 9. It's clean, efficient, powerful, and flexible.
One of the things KDE does so very right is multiple desktops. As a consultant, it's routine for me to work with several contracts simultaneously. Single-desktop systems like Windows become worthless in 2 hours of answering the phone and answering questions.
The overlapping windows, various browser and text windows all combine to create a hellacious mess in just a few hours.
It's very important for me to always leave the impression with each client that I'm there for THEM.
With KDE, I can define a desktop for each client, and then keep all processes and activity for that client on the appropriate desktop. I usually have 4 desktops, but right now I'm running 6. (busy!)
Somebody calls, I'm 2 or 3 keystrokes away from a busy computer with all relevant data onscreen. (Ctl-Tab and I'm there, buddy!)
I've been told more than once by clients that, while they know I work with and for other people, they never know that I'm not working 24x7 for THEM. That's a big win for me, and it's a big win in part because of KDE.
Don't you even begin to mention "half-baked". Maybe if your idea of "hard work" is beating Minesweeper in "expert" mode, Linux desktops are half-baked.
Perhaps my mome said it best: "You know what you like, and you like whatever you know..."
I sit down in front of a Windows box and immediately feel constrained. So much I just cannot do...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.