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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!
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
When you send data to 127.0.0.1, which OS picks it up? This boggles my mind.
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));