http://www.osnews.com/story/17531/Windows_Applications_in_Ubuntu_with_a_Seamless_Desktop Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:29:32 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?223231 http://osnews.com/thread?223231 cd /usr/src/linux
make-kpkg debian
make-kpkg modules_image
module-assistant prepare kqemu
dpkg -i /usr/src/kqemu-modules-''version''.dpkg
modprobe kqemu
qemu-img create -f qcow windows.img 2G
qemu -localtime -cdrom /dev/cdrom -m 384 -boot d windows.img

What about one of these:

http://emeitner.f2o.org/qemu_launcher
http://qemulator.createweb.de/

qemu_launcher is included in Debian (thus at least in "universe" in Ubuntu) and it's very straightforward to use.

Just my 0.02EUR.Edited 2007-03-21 17:43 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jack Malmostoso) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223235 http://osnews.com/thread?223235 Great idea, but maybe you should link to the tutorial about the "seamless" part. It's found right here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SeamlessVirtualization

And, I've been wondering what sort of impact qemu+kqemu has on a) performance vs VMWare and native, and b) battery lifeEdited 2007-03-21 17:51 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Constantine XVI) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223239 http://osnews.com/thread?223239 I'm pretty sure all but the last two lines are for compiling and setting up the KQEMU ("real" virtulization) module, and that's about as easy as it's gonna get until someone writes a pretty GUI to do it for you, or Ubuntu starts packaging and including kqemu.

Just my 0.03USD Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Constantine XVI) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223259 http://osnews.com/thread?223259 ad a)on decent hardware (with enough ram - 512MB is real minimum) you won't see a difference in speed in applications like office, IE, outlook or something with equal system requirements. Anyway, native is always fastest and i think vmware is slightly faster than qemu+kqemu but not much.

ad b) higher CPU and HDD usage -> shorter battery life
but it is impossible to tell how much shorter it will be, because it also depends on applications running in virtual machine Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (minio) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223272 http://osnews.com/thread?223272 > Anyway, native is always fastest and i think vmware is
> slightly faster than qemu+kqemu but not much.

Depends. CPU/memory performance is roughly comparable, but VMware is *way* better at screen performance. See http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?id=1580 for some tests I did.

Caveat: this is on FreeBSD, and uses Win4BSD (based on qemu/kqemu) and a very old version of VMware. I would think the general result holds. Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dr_J) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223329 http://osnews.com/thread?223329 > i think vmware is slightly faster than qemu+kqemu but
> not much.

VMWare is faster but most of the *perceived* performance benefit's over Qemu with the kernel accelerator module (and -kernel-kqemu) are due (in the case of Windows gusts atleast) to the guest side VGA and mouse drivers (bundled with VMWare Tools) which make the guest UI far more responsive and smooth. Qemu on the other hand opts to emulate real world hardware and your guest will use real world drivers. Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (baadger) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223377 http://osnews.com/thread?223377 Very, very cool thing. However, I fear that a casual user would meet another stumbling block.

Basically: if I want to open an Office document in seamless mode with MS Office, how do I load from/save on my /home directory by default? How do I seamlessly share files between the VM and the host?

Don't get me wrong -I know that you can share data by using, for example, SMB, or an USB drive (with vmware at least, last time I checked USB support in qemu was quite rudimental). But this is not great for seamless usability (that is, if I want to do such a setup for my parents trying to bundle the windows applications they use more/need more, this wouldn't work well).

Is it possible to build some kind of Windows script that automagically makes of "Documents and settings" a symlink to host /home (connected by SMB)?

In the loosely related case of rdesktop deployment on some organization (I think it would make much sense to have a single Windows box and license to run needed Windows apps that everyone can connect to), it is possible to have a client/server thing that automatically assigns the Documents and Settings to the home of the user connecting? I think yes, I'd like to know if someone did it. Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223381 http://osnews.com/thread?223381 I found it a lot easier to run applications such as Internet Explorer or Photoshop on PC-BSD, you just have to double-click the application wizard, click "Next" all the way, double-click the Photoshop icon and bang! Photoshop pops up, no headache, it just works Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Liquidator) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223390 http://osnews.com/thread?223390 I'm guessing PC-BSD has Wine installed by default. I'd like to note that Wine is OK for some apps, but is still a relatively flaky emulator. Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (noamsml) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223393 http://osnews.com/thread?223393 No, PC-BSD doesn't come with WINE, but the software packages come with a copy of WINE, preconfigured and tested. Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Liquidator) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223476 http://osnews.com/thread?223476 Which version of Photoshop? Work reasonably well? Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nzMM) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223485 http://osnews.com/thread?223485 I'm assuming this still doesn't support 3D acceleration? I could seriously enjoy linux this way if I could only play all my games. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pyro9219) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223504 http://osnews.com/thread?223504 Saying bad things about Windows = trolling.
Saying bad things about Linux = giving your opinion.

The internet gave birth to an entirely new species of humans: web warriors and internet soldiers. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (edwardyawn) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223531 http://osnews.com/thread?223531 Saying bad things about Windows = trolling.
Saying bad things about Linux = giving your opinion.

What would the oppressed minority of Linux users on OSNews do if you weren't around to stand up for them? Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StephenBeDoper) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223534 http://osnews.com/thread?223534 Don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that PC-BSD distributes Photoshop? I'd love to see what Adobe thinks about it.

I googled a bit and I found plain nothing about PC-BSD and Wine working in such a way. Could you please provide a link where it is explained what you mean? Such a feature won't pass unnoticed. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223535 http://osnews.com/thread?223535 I'd say they're talking about:

http://www.pbidir.com/packages.php?code=508

Looks like it's the full version bundled together with WINE but you naturally have to enter your legit product key. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brian) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223549 http://osnews.com/thread?223549 Now that the kqemu module is GPL, I don't see a reason why the compilation of the module should be done by the user. Ubuntu (or some third party) could provide binary packages of kqemu for the Feisty kernels. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (s-peter) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223578 http://osnews.com/thread?223578 Wine is the way to go for this - I use Crossover Office to play half-life under Linux. You need a well-supported video card with some muscle - a good nvidia 256MB comes to mind. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223584 http://osnews.com/thread?223584 Yes, ordinary users need the type of functionality that this provides. That doesn't mean that an ordinary user is going to set it up.

I agree that there are a lot of things that should be easier to do in the software world, and this is a decent example. Unfortunately, most of the user friendly code isn't written until after the basic functionality is provided. This is based on recent software developments. You should expect continuing improvement if this is good enough for an appreciable number of people to use it and contribute to it. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hands) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223604 http://osnews.com/thread?223604 I just played around with this a little, (using a remote machine) and found that if you run explorer.exe you get a nice fullscreen Windows desktop with Beryl effects

It's not exactly perfect, eg. you have to move windows with alt+mouse1 for them to wobble, and everything is treated as a normal window in terms of animations, but it's still quite fun to bring XP into the 21st century Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Schmeggma) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223679 http://osnews.com/thread?223679 I have wine / cedega / crossover. Also have NV 7600 w 256. Linux plays a few games, but it doesn't the things I almost always want. Mostly at this point in time it's BF2142. I cancelled my cedega subscription because WoW and pornographic games are supported month after month, yet games like the battlefield series will get voted to the dev's with no response.

Anyways, this isn't about those other products..

I still see this being a viable option for gaming when VMware gets there 3D stuff cleaned up. Progress so far has been pretty amazing. Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pyro9219) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?223891 http://osnews.com/thread?223891 I would love to be able to use this but I can't use an application that pops up another window or I just get a black screen.

I tried outlook and when I tried to send an email, it died. Anyone have any ideas on fixing this? Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (raymond3) Comments