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A Virtualized Linux System For Windows

Posted by kdawson on from the bill-in-the-middle dept.

getupstandup1 writes "Ulteo today unveiled their Virtual Desktop (screenshots, download) which is a free, full Linux desktop that runs seamlessly on Windows. It's interesting because it's not running under Xen or VMWare, but instead uses the coLinux patch, which they claim allows the system to achieve 'great performance, close to a native installation on the PC.' No need to reboot the system anymore to switch from Windows to Linux." We discussed Ulteo when the Ubuntu-derived distro was announced a year back.

15 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. As opposed to... andLinux? by Briareos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is it just me, or did this already exist? Doesn't sound that new to me...

    np: Saul Williams - Grippo (Saul Williams)

    --

    "I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole

    1. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep - and for a very long time, too.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, Ulteo is kde, andLinux is gnome. Otherwise identical.

    3. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by PhotoGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'll vouch for the underpinnings of andLinux and Ulteo, which is coLinux. I've been using it for years (an Ubuntu distro) and it's extremely solid, reliable, and efficient. It's a great way to have your Linux dev world near at hand, while needing a Windows box for other reasons. (In fact, I run my home PBX smoothly in a coLinux service on an XP PVR box.)

      I hear so little about coLinux, I feel like it's one of Linux's best kept secrets. It's cool that we're starting to see meta-distributions based upon it.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    4. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by redxxx · · Score: 4, Informative

      I believe you may have that backwards. I run andLinux, cause it is useful for certain stuff and I can't just run linux, and it is KDE. There is another xcf or something version.

      KDE in windows is going to be the better bet down the road for a lot of stuff, because you have to leap through fewer hoops with the filesystem, at least as far as most applications are concerned.

      It's kinda amazing being able to get an awful lot of stuff just running apt-get from a terminal, while inside XP. A real VM is far secure of course. Security decent hardware firewalls and no small amount of obscurity doesn't bother me too horible.

    5. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by nickos · · Score: 3, Informative

      coLinux is a version of the Linux kernel that can run as a task under Windows. andLinux is a distro which uses coLinux and runs on Windows.

    6. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      found by trial and error username:password
      me:me
      root:root

  2. Near native performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's interesting because it's not running under Xen or VMWare, but instead uses the coLinux patch, which they claim allows the system to achieve 'great performance, close to a native installation on the PC.' Doesn't VMWare (and most modern virtualization programs for that matter) run near native already? All the new major processors have the virtualization extensions built in. (I didn't mention Xen because it doesn't run on Windows)

    In fact, wiki has a list. Look under the "Guest OS speed relative to Host OS" column: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines#More_Details

    Most are native or near native.
  3. Re:Just wondering by mdfst13 · · Score: 2, Informative

    index => indices According to Merriam-Webster, indexes is also a valid spelling. In fact, indexes is listed prior to indices, which suggests that it is the preferred spelling.

    Cecil Adams has an interesting discussion of Latin/English pluralizations hidden in a discussion of the proper plural of penis.
  4. Re:Can it use your 3d card? stuff on the usb ports by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    In order: no, no, no, no.

    I've run colinux, it provides you a console and a virtual network interface and that's about it. The console has some slow graphics.

    The only one of those I know how to actually get you is to run Cygwin's OpenGL-equipped X server, and then use XDMCP to connect to your colinux VM.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re:Sweet by pandrijeczko · · Score: 3, Informative
    As a primarily Linux user, I'm more than happy to help people getting to grips with it if they choose to give Linux a try - but likewise I respect anyone who gives good reasons why Linux is not for them.

    But can we please stop with the "I won't run Linux because of lack of games" statements because they are meaningless.

    Firstly, nothing stops you dual-booting both Linux and Windows in order to understand some of the benefits Linux could potentially bring to you.

    Secondly, the fact that there are so few modern games on Linux is not a fault of Linux itself. Yep, maybe it's because the Linux user base is much smaller than Windows and/or maybe it's because we Linux users are spoilt by getting so much software for free that we've forgotten how to pay for games, both are acceptable reasons to justify the fact that games companies won't port games to it. After all, games companies are businesses and if they see a way to make money, then they will do it.

    Thirdly, if you're into modern graphics intensive games then, yes, it's probably a bad idea to use Linux. But software like DOSBox, Wine, countless platform emulators & Open Source games means that there is actually a *HUGE* catalogue of games you can play perfectly on Linux. Yes, that catalogue probably won't include Call Of Duty 4 but as you start going through the back catalogue of games, the further you go back the more ways you will find to play them on Linux.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  6. I don't know... by tehBoris · · Score: 5, Informative

    But isn't that project you linked more like Wubi?

    Instead of being a Windows port of the Linux kernel (yeah... weird) like and/coLinux is, it is a Windows based Linux installer, which stuffs the whole distro's file system into a single file in your Windows' partition.

  7. Texmaker by backwardMechanic · · Score: 2, Informative

    You may like Texmaker. It's developed by the guy who originally wrote Kile, but doesn't depend on KDE so runs on anything. I switched because I wanted to use the same editor under Win and Linux, but actually prefer it now.

  8. Re:Mirrors? by TexasDex · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've had a try at setting up a torrent for it: http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=5665e3caf528c853645efe633113c6bab9042718

    --
    The Cheese Stands Alone.
  9. offtopic - Re:Just wondering by spidercoz · · Score: 2, Informative
    As I stated in another thread on another site yesterday, siting references to fake online dictionaries does not constitute proof that this is, in fact, a word.

    Read more.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire