Submitted by “The problem is, for me, and many other developers, administrators or just normal users, that if you want to use applications from a different OS, you have to reboot and boot into the other OS. Sometimes, when you, for example, just want to do a quick test of a newly compiled application, and go back to work, it is very inconvenient and time consuming. Standard ways of dealing with these problems is either creating virtual machine for Linux, setting up two PCs (one with Windows, second with Linux) or using Cygwin/SFU (Services for Unix). But there is also another way, which allows you to run Linux on Windows natively – coLinux.”
I developed a habit of installing coLinux on every Windows systems I touch
But will it run compiz? >:>
Edited 2007-07-13 18:19
No, if you R.T.Fine.A. it states “But if you are someone, who runs Linux because of Blender, other 3d apps, Beryl [compiz] you want to watch movies under Linux – you won’t find anything extraordinary in coLinux. You are better off with standard Linux distro, and Windows in VM.”
Edited 2007-07-13 19:10
Yeah, I know… It was a joke.
1) Wine or Crossover
2) Remote Desktop via VNC or Seamless RDP over
headless VM
3) Multi-boot system
4) Port the software
I love this kind of stuff.
At work I have been using cygwin for a while on windows. I even have the same home directory that I do in Linux under Cygwin because I mounted a Samba share of my Linux home directory on Windows and set that share as the home dir in Cygwin’s /etc/passwd.
I use Xming as my X server on Windows.
I also make use of VNC.
At home, I go the other way around (because I wanted beryl) and run Linux. I use Wine for most things and VirtualBox if I can’t get something working in Wine.
It looks like OSX will soon have a very nice solution superior to anything I have seen for other platforms. Watch this video…
I can’t verify that this link is what I really wanted because youtube is blocked where I’m at now but I think this is it….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIApJMzGzDQ
I know there’s a similar (but not Apple-level slick yet) solution in Ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SeamlessVirtualization
My #2 option has the same effect as Coherency mode as in VMWare Fusion but is more external and requires some preperation. It will be nice when Linux VMWare or VirtualBox get that.
I’ve tried several installations of coLinux in the past. While running Linux kernel in a window is very exciting, I had to give up for two reasons (in every try).
First running X applications is not very easy (the review also touches this). You also need to have a seperate Cygwin installation for the X server. (And launch both of them together, it’s time and desktop space comsuming).
Additionally, while the performance is acceptable, stability is not. coLinux runs a “parallel” kernel which directly accesses the hardware (I guess). Thus any coLinux failure is also fatal in Windows (i.e: blue screen). That’s simply not acceptable.
Thus I reverted back to QEMU. Basically, it’s fast, portable and can run without installation (or a kqemu driver can be installed for better performance). I can also boot directly from the very same system (it’s on a USB disk).
I hope one day I’ll be able to return to coLinux, but it is not today.
it is called “andLinux” and you can find at http://www.andlinux.org
I am using it, and except that I have still not find how to change the keymap, it is quite a good tool. It come with pré-configured Xming and tools to resize drive files.
Topologilinux is also a great coLinux distribution. Highly recommended.
http://www.topologilinux.com/