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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."
Now the stability, Awesome user interface of windows, and games combined with the myriad of useful GNU/Linux apps!
I always thought that linux assimilating windows was better than windows assimilating linux.
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!
That's a good thing, IMHO. Too often, I have needed some tool or other while working on Windows machines, and there are no free alternatives. If Windows users can use really free software, they may be less inclined to download horrific ad-ware and spy-ware, too. I wonder how easy it is to share data between Windows and Linux apps? Guess I'll go RTFA now...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hardly. This is a very interesting and useful project, with rather deeper implications for virtual server operation. Rather than requiring a pile of specialized code to emulate a machine, you just give the other OS a little private corner of its own, allowing the host OS to give it resources whenever they're avaliable (and how nice it is about giving those resources is easy to manage). Presto, huge performance increase.
It'd be a slow day if we saw, say, another article about SCO, an article about Microsoft 'blocking spam', some nostalgic whining about lack of innovation in games, a few drab articles about nothing in particular...
Kind of like yesterday.
This flies in the face of science.
for linux noobs like me, this is greeat news ! this will allow me to run a distro at work where xp boot is obliged. i hope they come up with an installation tutorial & extensive documentation soon (no docs for now on th website)
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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.
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 saw this on LKML about an hour ago, and it interested me then.
What I am wondering about is quite how stable it is possible to get something like this.
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?
Overall this is an excellent innovation for Linux to move forward. I suppose you could chart the increase of Linux "market share" as follows.
1.) Linus and his friends
2.) Early Distributions
3.) Redhat makes inroads
4.) Live CD's (Knoppix et al)
5.) CoLinux
You have gone from experimental boxes only, to dual booting to Live CD's to try Linux out (very slow...)
If this can come close to Linux alone in speed, then this is a major step forward.
No more lengthy installs with dual booting etc.
If a linux fan wants to show a Windows user what its all about then they can hopefully download one EXE and go.
Pity I haven't got a windows partition so I can test it.
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.
Yeah, but does it run on Windows?
Finally, installing Linux takes only one click!
In the future, please refer to it as GNU/Windows...
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
When you send data to 127.0.0.1, which OS picks it up? This boggles my mind.
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.
Why this does seem quite cool I want to offer a warning before you go and install this on your non-backed up mission critical server.
Many projects have attempted to achieve this goal. It's taken quite a bit of time so far. This project has taken a short cut though by simply letting the Windows kernel and Linux kernel run side-by-side in kernel mode. Traditional approaches don't allow this.
That's because if anything goes wrong in the Windows kernel, you risk trashing your Linux kernel the same applies for the Linux kernel trashing the Windows kernel.
Before you go and so Linux never crashes or Windows never crashes, what you're relying on is that this particular project has enough of an understanding of both kernels that they can cover every circumstance where there would be a negative interaction.
I'm not saying this can't work, I'm just saying I'd be very careful about running it on anything I cared about.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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.
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.