Cassowary – Run Windows Apps on Linux using a VM as if they were native apps
github.com
github.com
emphasis on the semi!
Now try searching for any issue about it or even documentation about it in Google. All results are about postgres.
Even something as popular as rust the language has to compete against solutions to prevent the actual rusting and the game and the movie.
Sometimes I wish most software were given a uuid as a name. Life would be much easier.
> Australian slang, meaning to throw an object very hard and fast. Generally an object small enough to fit in one hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab4kYHWU_dA&list=PLPSBKgud15...
Announcement and Q&A on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/skmh28/i_made_an_app...
Kudos on this amazing project and all the work you put into making all this!
Perhaps it's the sparse explanation from the github page? I dunno.
What I do know is; I have a Windows VM under libvirt/Kvm/Qemu and it's everything this thing claims to be - if I understood the broken English of it - I have passed through my RTX2070super GPU and I am basically running Windows+"apps" - including a few Windows games, and I'm using Looking-Glass to do it all, meaning I have full speed graphical access to Windows I need.
Can somebody please explain to me what this thing is and why it's any different or better than what I have now?
Worked fine after selecting ‘spice’, pulse audio didn’t work tho but also didn’t result in an error. Apart from sound everything worked out of the box, tho.
I did all that to run some old music training software that only came in 16 and 32 bit versions.
If these aren't features you need then you could just say that, instead of writing dismissive non-constructive comments.
i think the vmware one even supports 3d hardware accelerated windows.
See also: https://planetvm.net/blog/?p=2936
"They work in similar way but this this project has features that could not be added easily into winapps.
It also aims to add more features while being easy to setup and use !"
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/skmh28/i_made_an_app...
Instead of constantly rebooting my dual boot system this seems like an interesting approach for me to try. I need to play games in Windows without having to reboot from Linux.
Does it need a licensed windows install in a VM to run the apps?
Valve has leverage with game developers who rely on Steam for distribution to work together to get games working in Proton, but the same relationship doesn't exist for other non-native apps and Wine. So the development really needs to happen on the wine side.
Hell, it might even be useful! Windows 11 should add desktop shortcuts for Linux applications, so this would be an easy way to run programs inside an older version of Windows (if you install Windows 7 in the VM, for example).
I'd recommend 6GB instead of 4GB as minimum when dealing with Win10. A typical Win10 on idle, without anything launched in foreground uses around 3GB hence 4GB is kind of at limit.
I guess it streamlines launching apps?
I don't understand how its better than VM, it says run them like they're native, but its separate windows for single applications, I thought it would use something like WINE.
It should be called "A Windows VM for executables in Linux with native windowing" unless I didn't understand it.
For a long time I boycotted the term "app" once Apple et al. used it as their term for what I considered "programs" and now I'm just done with caring.
App = program = executable = distinct set of actions triggered by user or automated input = interface
The best way to do it is to have a seperate GPU that you pass through fully to the Windows VM - a friend has that setup - which works perfectly but then you can't use that gpu in Linux and I don't particularly think it's worth it for me to have multiple GPUs when wsl gives me 99% of what I want with minimal setup.
Of course, YMMV, I recall seeing that linus derp tech guy YouTube make it work one time. Good luck keeping it working properly in the long haul.
I feel I've already learned this the hard way, have several spare Supermicro servers to show for the result of what I consider to be a failed project.
Instead, I maintain a separate windows-only machine for such occasions. Takes up very little extra space or time.
Would love to hear from other folks who use this on the daily.
You can use consumer cards for this. Both Nvidia and AMD consumer cards. Nvidia drivers work fine now, and don't require any workarounds (they previously "blocked" VM's with their driver, but was trivial to workaround). AMD have a few hardware quirks, but that can typically be worked around too. Though you're best going with Nvidia as it's more straightforward.
It also seems that a lot of virtualisation software supports it (libvirt/qemu, vmware esxi, proxmox, xen, probably a few others). It's typically also, set and forget. Once it's configured, you're good to go. There's not much of "keeping it working properly in the long haul". I've had my setup for about 4 years or so now. Even through software and hardware changes.
It sounds like you're a pro, maybe I'm just not that good at configuring teh vmwares / virsh / xen / qemus.
https://mathiashueber.com/windows-virtual-machine-gpu-passth... https://linustechtips.com/topic/978579-guide-linux-pci-gpu-v... https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
And you don't have to do it for the most of AMD cards and the newest NVIDIA cards.
Unfortunately that's not beginner-friendly, I know, but that's the problem of VFIO in general - you can't really do it without being comfortable with terminal, editing configuration files etc. It would be cool to make it automatic somehow, but that would require making some tool(s) for all the preparatiary work (assigning vfio-pci driver, building united) and adding features to virt-manager (to be able to all the stuff graphically, without modifying XML).
But anyway, in your original comment you said that passthrough is not possible with consumer GPUs, which is simply not true. It's possible with pretty much every consumer card.
- I love Go but the Go runtime is a pretty big snowflake, its one of the few non-libc users of the Linux syscall interface . Also, I think they fixed it on the Go side as well, for good measure, though I could be wrong.
<ms-rant> Plus, Microsoft- who needs em? Not a pleasant daily driver. My entire family already accidentally "upgraded" to windows 11. Ever since, they've fallen into a perpetual zombie-like state of confusion with regard to their windows computers and what is happening on them. What is good, better, or worse? *shrug*
</ms-rant>
I'd much rather cast the MS bits off to a lowly second-class Hypervised Cassowary VM.
Long Live CASSOWARY!
That said, I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone to use Windows. By all means, run Linux as your desktop if you want to. I do.
If it doesn’t feel like I control my computer, it doesn’t matter how polished the UI looks or how fast the games run. It’s a non-starter.
I admit that if I saw web results instead of local apps I'd be mad. But I have gobbles of Windows installations at my house and none of those have this problem, starting from that tiny compute stick hooked up to a large TV that my grandson uses to watch Netflix.
Not sure if it's been fixed yet, this was about 8 months ago.
Not sure what's slow about it other than accessing windows drives from wsl2 and vice versa.
(I do use Parallels, but sometimes I want to use a remote app without a full-screen session)
You might be interested in https://looking-glass.io/
Great work!
"Applications" != "Apps"