WinApps: Run Windows apps in Linux as if they were a part of the native OS | Hacker News Reader

WinApps: Run Windows apps in Linux as if they were a part of the native OS

github.com

307 pointspetepete88 comments

QubesOS has an implementation of this called seamless mode and doesn't require an RDP server nor having to manually add software: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-tools/#using-windows-ap... Here's a screenshot of using Powerpoint: https://www.qubes-os.org/attachment/wiki/WindowsAppVms/windo...

It's been awhile but I recall some VM managers having this feature (seamless mode) though. I'm not sure if it was VirtualBox or paid VMWare.

sure but is the QubesOS method as performant as RDP? RDP just sends the draw commands not the image bits that's why it can be really performant.

VMWare might have but VirtualBox definitely did.

VMWare has a feature called Unity that does this, however AFAIR support was removed for Linux hosts and guests a while ago.

LSW - Linux Subsystem for Windows.

UPD: Just draw a sketch of LSW icon/logo[0] using SolveSpace 3.0 pre-release "nightly" build[1,2].

[0] https://i.imgur.com/LIOy1nV.png

[1] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/master

[2] https://github.com/Symbian9/SolveSpace-Daily-Engineering#sol...

Indeed. This or something like it could be incorporated into a Microsoft-maintained Ubuntu-based Linux distro for backward compatibility. Meanwhile it could have a new displayPS compositing window manager and a nice dev kit. I’d probably abandon macOS for web development...

Maybe call it Windows NC (for next century).

> This or something like it could be incorporated into a Microsoft-maintained Ubuntu-based Linux distro for backward compatibility.

I prefer if LSW would be incorporated in WSL for "recursion":

> LSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSWS...

Are there enough 's' in this stack trace?

wouldn't it rather be LSWSLSWSLSWSLSWSLSW?

Thx, fixed 's' in comment above.

Note:

> the first thing you need to do is set up a Virtual Machine running Windows 10 Professional (or any version that supports RDP).

With Proton, Steam is basically a Windows app launcher for Linux.

I've been playing games such as Spelunky 2, Hades and Divinity: Original Sin 2 on Arch Linux with Steam/Proton, and it works seamlessly without any issues. I have Windows still just in case for some games, but I haven't booted it for ages.

It's crazy how well most AAA games work:

Jedi: Fallen order worked out of the box, no sound issue.

Mass Effect: Andromeda works flawlessly, perfect frame rate, surround sound worked perfectly. I just got one crash to desktop over the whole playthrough and I suspect it was due to something else (updated packages while running the game). Incidentally, the game is great, esp. compared to the negative review; I'm still shocked by the discrepancy.

Same for Witcher 3, GTA V, No Man's Sky ...

More recent games often still have issues. RDR2 is just getting playable, but it's getting fixed faster. There's also less and less annoyances: just a few months back alt-tabbing was very dodgy, now it's extremely robust. Also multi-monitor support seems to work perfectly nowadays. I had some issues with controllers but I haven't tried recently.

Yeah, I’ve beaten Sekiro and run through a season of F1 2018 in Linux. I’ve also played through The Outer Worlds from the Epic store in Lutris with no problems.

It’s surprising that AAA games on Linux work better than ever these days even without native support.

I do not even have windows and most games i buy simply work these days. I stopped looking at the support icons completely.

Exception: Bad Unity games. However these often do not work properly on windows either

I remember that I had some major problems with divinity on arch. Like I had to move around some files after every update, otherwise it wouldn't launch.

Has this been fixed?

Usually to find workarounds and general compatibility reports, check protondb.com.

Yes! But then I'm having issues with Phasmophobia where it launches the game but loses connection to steam and I can't play with friends.

Cool. Can you run RDR2 under Linux?

Not only you can. It runs faster under Linux (if you have AMD GPU that is). https://flightlessmango.com/benchmarks/6RfJoH1N6IQ

Does it actually look the same though? I've tested many games under Linux and they ran faster because GPU drivers didn't support all the same Vulkan/OpenGL extensions and thus didn't actually render many effects.

Which then makes these FPS comparisons a bit unfair since the GPU is actually under a lesser load.

Theres youtube link on that page. https://youtu.be/6RfJoH1N6IQ you can compare yourself. Note that the game uses vulkan, thus it can render without any translation.

Evidently, yes: https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180

online - no. offline, with issues (audio crackling, crashes). So "evidently" it's a poor experience, at best.

According to protondb, sort of:

https://www.protondb.com/app/1174180

Good word, "sort of". I would imagine if your car would "sort of" work would you be willing to drive it?

Yes? Aircon in my car hasn't worked in over a year, why would I stop driving it. And that's beside the fact that RDR2 is a form of entertainment, whereas for a lot of people driving is a necessity. It's pretty easy to find games that run well on Linux.

I keep having issues with the built in GPS in my car, and occasionally I’ll get a flash of an error message about the gearbox being in P while driving. One of the glow plugs is also alarming as being bad.

My windows machine has a bunch of “unknown hardware” listed in device manager. It’s a fresh windows 10 install of a dell xps laptop.

I’d say my car is doing better than my computer. At least Bluetooth works in my car.

If I had to and there was no risk of injury. Much like how there’s no risk of injury here.

It would be better if this could acknowledge the security is an important requirement... Like not sharing the whole home drive when only a single file is required.

It's interesting because Windows 10 with VSM actually runs Windows apps in a VM (though letting them talk directly to devices, so definitely not a micro kernel).

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/iis-support-blog/wind...

I hear you, here, but the home directory needs to be shared to support "Save As". I will keep thinking on this one for sure.

Fuse is probably a better starting point. Something like sshfs. Adapt it so supports showing the directory sub-tree, but not the files (other than ones selected with the native GUI).

On macos it is quite common now for apps to pop up a dialogue box to ask for file open/browse permission for a particular location. I presume something similar is done on Windows A.

Make a sub-folder and offer to save within that folder?

Or go the browser way and make the filepicker system-level and granting access as you select.

how does this compare to seamlessrdp which does the same thing?

https://github.com/rdesktop/seamlessrdp

This project is about integration with the Gnome desktop. It uses xfreerdp RemoteApp support[1] under the hood (an up to date equivalent of seamlessrdp).

[1] https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/wiki/RemoteApp

"SeamlessRDP requires Windows Server 2008r2 or later to operate correctly."

That seems like a very limiting requirement for many use-cases.

How is this more limiting than WinApps which only supports Windows 10 with RDP?

Windows 10 with RDP is cheaper and has a significantly larger usebase?

Since Windows 10 is newer than Windows Server 2008 I assume it is supported as well, since it says "Windows Server 2008 or later" is required.

I would not, server is a different product line and MS has different features of RDP enabled for different versions. Typically you distinguish consumer and server versions when listing compatible versions.

And RemoteApp is not officially supported (as a server) on Windows 10 Pro/Home.

This seems to be the same technology as Remoteapp, a windows/citrix system for streaming individual app windows over RDP, often from Azure, and which is built into windows. Several years ago I experimented with this, using the RemoteApp Tool [0] to stream Photoshop from a local Windows 10 VM to the (Windows 10) host.

[0] https://github.com/kimmknight/remoteapptool

How seamless are things like clipboard interaction etc.

They work for me as long as you have Bi-directional clipboard enabled in KVM.

KVM itself doesn't really do anything with clipboards. What's more likely happening here is that the RDP client used by this project (FreeRDP) supports the RDP clipboard redirection feature.

See: rdpclip.exe running in the target machine whenever you RDP.

Think this is a great idea. I’m for sure going to check it out. Working with Microsoft Office is the one thing I still cannot do under Linux. I know people will suggest all kinds of native Linux apps that supports the Office formats, but they just never work out, there is always some problem with them. Also, Office basically does not work (at least newer versions of Office) over Wine.

I am going to try it out!

Have a look at Crossover Office: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover#linux

It's a commercial Wine version. I've used it successfully for many years when I ran Linux on the desktop.

I use Libre Office in GNU/Linux and I am free from severe vendor lock. Rumors about impossibility for a business to work without MSO are overblown.

Agreed, but only if the entire business uses Libre Office. There's enough compatibility between MS Office and LibreOffice to exchange the occasional file, but when you get down to complex usage, you really need to pick between the two.

For anyone with IT knowledge, such a switch is easy. For most people in most companies it's not, though. Loads of people needed workshops and training when MS introduced the ribbon design, and some people that couldn't adapt still swear by their old Office 2003 installs. Lots of people learn not to use feature X to accomplish Y, but to click button Z to make Y happen. Even people who advertise "experience with computers" on their resumé are often unable to adapt to different software because they only know how to do something in a certain software package and don't know how to figure out (use Google) how to get feature parity.

The sad state of modern offices is that it's somehow okay to be "not good at computers" even when your job is centered around using them. Whenever something small changes, people will call IT to "fix" it because they're now confused.

In young, small companies and startups this isn't a problem per se, other than needing to Google to see how to do a certain task, but most companies in the world aren't capable of switching to another product without sending everyone to a workshop to learn how to use a new product. There's very little workshops centered on open source software, making is nearly impossible as a company to pick anything other than MS Office or, these days, the Google office suite.

There's also the problem of compatibility. Most people on the company i work at run some flavour of Linux so everyone has LibreOffice installed. All of our customers use Excel to basically run their business. Sometimes, sheets need to be exchanged. We run into trouble that certain parts of their Excel sheets just don't work correctly, just because of the sheer volume and complexity of the files exchanged as with companies basically running on Excel sheets. We have a few people with MS Excel licenses for those cases. You simply cannot ignore compatibility in situations like that.

My company uses Libre Office for 13 years (a no-brainer, we don't even have windows computers in the office), we had zero problems interacting with the outer world and 'other businesses'.

So when I speak that this 'business is impossible without MS Office' narrative is false, I do it from many years of experience that proves otherwise.

Where do you work? Are you guys hiring? :-D

here, https://redsolution.com, and sadly, no, we're not hiring at the time.

thanks anyway!

I wish this was true for me. Before making this I used OnlyOffice, LibreOffice, and even tried building Electron O365 apps. I switched to this method because of compatibility for pixel-perfect PPT presentations, and Word formatting was always "off" for everyone else.

Just convert your presentations to PDFs, that's the only reliable way to go with a presentation to a random computer

I wish but many complex excel sheets on LibreOffice Calc do not function correctly.

Simple excel sheets are also hit or miss.

I found that wps office seems to work better than LibreOffice in terms of compatibility with complicated MSOffice files. It's free but not open source, if you care about that.

Libreofice calc sheets do not work at all in Excel, so the criticism is unwarranted. Just work in the native format.

Libre Office != Microsoft Office

Word, Excel, & PowerPoint are the only reason I keep a spare Windows 10 laptop.

plus MS Paint 3D which my kids love. Does anyone got it successfuly running in Wine?

It is very smooth to watch.

I am curious though. It seems as though this makes an RDP server in a VM and then connects to it. How secure is it?

Hi, I'm the author so I figure I can answer this. The system is built to run a local VM and RDP using the local NAT IP provided by the KVM networking system. So all RDP traffic is local to the machine. If for some reason you decide to use a separate server for RDP via the configuration, standard encryption pathways are in place just as with any other RDP scenario.

Worst case scenario you could set firewall rules to not allow external access to the RDP port (3389). You could also set your VM to host-only networking, but in that case Microsoft office wouldn’t be able to use any cloud functionality. Although I guess that could be a feature, not a bug, depending on your viewpoint

Try SoftMaker FreeOffice. It's compatible with MS Office, works well in HiDPI and it's free.

I did before this. And OnlyOffice, and LibreOffice, and even Electron O365s I created. None could handle all the different PPT themes and animations used in our presentations.

For sure that might be the case, but it does not make it a bad product.

Hasn't this been a feature in desktop vms for over a decade? Or am I missing something

This looks pretty nice! Is it using RDS RemoteApp or something 3rd-party? I seem to recall RemoteApp only running on Server editions and no real alternative existing last time I looked into this. A

Yes, it's using RDS RemoteApps. You can semi-activate it on any modern version of windows with a registry key hack, which is included in the repo.

The clever bit here is the winapp code that builds the RDP shortcuts to directly launch the remote apps.

Nice! I'll definitely be checking it out then

Would be great if it could run x86 on arm but I guess if it was that easy it would already be done

The original reason why Bellard wrote QEMU was to run Wine on non-x86 machines. In theory one could do the same here.

So it's like reverse WSL2?

This is more like Parallels Desktop integration on Mac. It’s Windows in a VM (with all the overhead that entails), showing the rasterized app windows into the Linux desktop window manager and launcher via the remote desktop protocol which is more commonly used for remote machine access. Definitely nice to have that seamless integration, but realistically it’s heavier than WSL. In the readme it says the author is trying to strip out some of the heavier elements of the Windows shell, in which case it could be more lightweight, closer to what WSL2 is doing. But if you wanted to do that, you might be better off using Windows Server Core Edition in the VM.

WSCE was mentioned in the Reddit thread, so I've added that to my list to do some discovery on as well. If it works out, I'll revise the README appropriately.

run (4) windows apps in linux as if they were part of the native OS.

I'd prefer Wine for this, since it avoids using Windows.

What makes this better than Wine?

Wine is an (imperfect) emulation layer. This runs Windows apps inside a VM, thus avoiding potential compatibility issues that are common with Wine. Downside is that running a VM requires more system resources, of course.

Aren't you thinking of that other project, WIA(I)EL?

Seem interesting and I liked... But, I'm afraid a DMCA will finish the project as the legal area seems dark gray at least.

How so? This seems squeaky clean to me. You install a (presumably properly licensed) copy of Windows in a VM, you set it up, and you use RDP (a documented protocol from MS, no less) to view programs in rootless mode.

If you want to get fancy, you could use software from Citrix to do more or less the same thing.

You don’t really need a license use Windows if you don’t care about the watermark.

DMCA? There is nothing here that implies circumvention or copyright. It's essentially just RDP'ing to a VM and showing a specific app's window instead of the whole desktop.

This is not all that much different from VirtualBox "seamless mode", and VMware's "unity".

Why? This appears to only be a very fancy virtual machine configuration.

Thanks for supporting IE. It is a great browser in many ways, and I,ll take IE6 over Crome for writing any day of the week (and do). Corny noobs hate on it because of quirks, oh well.

Haha Redditors called this "Evil" but I've got a number of positive comments for it due to all those old IE only government apps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com