Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box If you're thinking about switching to Linux but there are a few Windows apps you just can't do without, you do have options… and some of them are free. Windows 10 is staring down the barrel of Microsoft's gun. The "End of 10" is nigh. But when Windows 10 reaches its end of its life on October 14th, there are a wealth of free …
A previous commentard presciently noted that Windows isn't an OS - it's an app delivery system. Trying to replace it with Linux - which is almost exclusively an OS - was never going to work.
(This is at the desktop level. Servers as we know are different and there are quite a few MS desktop outfits that run Linux backends).
Shifting focus to how to get the apps you want to run under Linux is more seismic than it's being reported as.
Sometimes you need to accept in tech land that no matter how hard you may push the tech, it's the pull of the end user that is supreme. Because your board, their partners and their partners tennis partners are all end users.
Yes,. most people but Linuxtards use applications, not an OS, and they don't care what the OS, and if they don't use Windows for their applications probably use macOS. Because there are the applications they need to use, and once they start the applications, the OS becomes almost irrelvant. And if they have to start a VM or use some otehr layers, they will simpy stay away, why make your life more difficult just to affirm exactly what?
Unless Linuxtards stop worshipping their OS for some religious beliefs about "freedom" (mostly, freetardsdom to exploit others's work for free) , "open source", etc. etc., and start to think about how to make it a viable desktop operating system with a decent desktop system (all Linux desktops sucks, and if MS didn't dumbed down its after Windows 7 they would suck even more), a unified GUI API, and usable applications comparable to whait is available on Windows and macOS, it will be the fourth choice as a desktop OS (the third one? Whatever is not Linux).
Windows is OK as an OS but the full Windows Experience is horrible. Versions of Windows with all the cruft removed show that it's actually OK. You can get that desktop experience by running Linux which is why people switch to Linux. Often Windows programs install on Linux using WINE. Everyone would be happier with Linux if all the Windows programs worked.
I agree that Nadella is makint the worst out of Windows - Ballmer made a bad call with Windows 8, a bad call that could easily be avoided keepnt the 7 look&feel on desktops - but it was Nadella to add all the spyware and dumbing down the interface as much as he could.
The real problem is Nadella is another freetard - fatter bonuses and dividends.
He wanted to cut development investments as much as it could, and exploit free work as much as it could. The result is a Linux-like experience. If Microsoft had a better CEO at the helm, Linux would be derided.
Really, every time I have to work in Ubuntu desktop I feel as if it was 1990. Evem Windows 3.1 was better. from a UI point of view (not the underlying OS, of course). After all Apple Mac OS was widely used for its goof UI even when the underlying OS showed all is age and obsolescence. Because for most users using moslty a single application at a time can't see them - what it maters is what the application can do, not the OS.
The ugly truth is GUI are hard. They require not only programming skills. And those who know how to to them poreprly, don't like to work for nothing. And without a unified, polished GUI API, Linux is always a bad desktop solution.
Ubuntu keeps trying but I feel they've bet on the wrong horse (GNOME). I've briefly used KDE and came away very impressed, more unified than my Win10 laptop even,which still shows me grey oldskool cobtrol panels now and then.
If course, I quickly reverted to my comfy niche customized desktop :)
"all Linux desktops sucks, and if MS didn't dumbed down its after Windows 7 they would suck even more"
Downvote because I recently picked up an old laptop with Windows 10 (my previous Windows use was XP) and I hated Win10 so much it is currently booting Linux Mint from a USB stick. The Cinnamon UI is a little quirky but that is probably a lack of familiarity. Certainly it hasn't annoyed me enough to want to get rid of it, like Windows managed in a mere few days.
You are right about the lack of apps, but this is inertia. Everybody makes stuff for Windows because everybody else uses Windows, thus it's where the money is being made.
Yes, very nice summation of the current options.
I've been doing something similiar where based on the "one thing" I wanted to do I was either dual booting, or running vmware player, or running wine.
But to have the idea of "run the app not the OS" formalized as a technique is quite helpful.
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Interesting to mention using VMWare/Virtualbox for doing virtualisation but not just using KVM with a simple bundled manager (e.g. Virtual Machine Manager). I've always tended towards KVM 'because it's already there' so not investigated alternatives and any potential differences/benefits. I tend to just quickly install a VM and then RDP into it.
Recently, I've found Tiny11 to be ideal for a low footprint route to running a few awkward Windows applications.
> but not just using KVM
The main reason is that I haven't tried this yet.
I have written, both here and previously, about why I like and use Virtualbox. It's free, it's FOSS, it runs on Linux _and_ Windows _and_ macOS, and it works exactly the same on all of them. It comes with guest additions that are also FOSS and those give you niceties like automatic resizing of a graphical desktop to match the VM's window size, bi-directional cut'n'paste, and access to shared drives on the host without needing a working network. As the guest additions are FOSS they're already in most big-name distros' repositories. On Ubuntu or any derivative, just do:
sudo apt install -y virtualbox-guest-x11
And you get the additions with no extra config, and they will upgrade along with the distro.
And they'll still work if you move that VM from a Mac to a Linux or Windows PC, or vice versa.
For me, the convenience wins.
Hyper-V on Windows is a lot more work to configure and use, and in my very limited testing, performance of graphical Linux guest is terrible.
I've used KVM,m including quite extensively in $DAYJOB-1, and I find it very clunky and inconvenient... so why bother?
You get an awful UI and user experience, and in return, you also lose VM portability!
If you like it, by all means, use it. I am planning to investigate this. WinApps sounds fun. I don't need it myself but I can see valid uses.
I used to use VirtualBox for software testing for a number of years but switched to KVM about 8 months ago. I use KVM VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) to set up the VMs, do snap shots, etc.
Overall, I found it easier to set up and manage a VM with KVM VMM than I did with VirtualBox. The one exception was using it with OpenBSD, which I eventually solved by finding a post which said that I needed a different setting for console access.
I use it for software testing, so I do file transfer via SSH and SCP and as a consequence of this haven't tried out USB or disk sharing. There seem to be settings for it however in KVM VMM.
The default networking set up in KVM is much, much better than it is with VirtualBox, the latter being very convoluted. With KVM the VMs just appear to be normal network end points which you can address by host name (you need libnss-libvirt for this). This means I can address a VM in the same was as I do a Raspberry Pi connected via Ethernet.
With VirtualBox the default is to use a combination of a port number plus localhost. There may be a way to get VirtualBox to use more normal addresses, but you need to be a networking guru to figure out how to do it, which sort of detracts from the idea that VirtualBox is somehow easier.
I had been using VirtualBox for about 10 years before changing to KVM, but I'm very happy to have made the switch and would not change back. My use case is automated software testing where I currently have 10 different operating systems installed in VMs, so I can't compare use cases involving say playing games.
Your general comments, especially this one:
> The default networking set up in KVM is much, much better than it is with VirtualBox, the latter being very convoluted.
... remind me very much of what my colleagues told me in $DAYJOB-1.
I personally vehemently disagree. I am very familiar with Virtualbox, having used it daily for a decade or more now. I find its networking settings dead easy and simple to navigate. None of this localhost stuff you describe is necessary.
(The options are dead simple: under Networking, you pick 1 of 3 choices: NAT, in which case the guest is firewalled off from the host; bridged, in which case the VM is another machine on the same network with the host; or local-only, in which case the VM is airgapped from the network, can't reach the internet, but is networked solely to the host on a virtual network.)
*However* I mostly use graphical desktop OSes in Vbox. I have rarely done text-mode server VMs. I have done it -- I spun up a K8s cluster entirely in VBox -- but that is the main use case of KVM/VMM. If you mainly want server instances then KVM+VMM is probably easier for that.
I think it is very much a case of _what you are used to_.
Neither is flat out easier than the other all the time for everyone. It depends what you want.
For me, I want GUI guests of modest, limited, custom spec. For this, VBox is easier than VMware or KVM+VMM or Hyper-V. UTM comes close but always overspecifies the guests.
I also used VirtualBox for about 10 years before switching to KVM last autumn. VirtualBox was what I was used to. I only spent the effort to switch to KVM because of deteriorating vendor support for VirtualBox in terms of it was taking longer and longer for the vendor to come out with a fix when it would stop working. To me, the VM system was a tool to get a job done and I had no interest in changing until I was pushed into it by increasing problems in VirtualBox.
With regards to networking, if you wanted to SSH into a VirtualBox VM using the default networking set up, you had to do something like "ssh username@localhost -p 2222". If you had a lot of VMs you needed to keep a list of which VM was using which port number, etc. The same goes for anything else network related you needed to do.
To do that with a default set up of KVM/VMM and libnss-libvirt you would do something like "ssh username@win11", just the same as if it was a separate bit of hardware on the network.
Perhaps there is a way to get VirtualBox to do that, but I gave up on trying to do so after working on the problem for a while as becoming a VirtualBox networking expert wasn't in my range of interests and I had other things which were demanding my time. I had the routine tasks scripted, but for the occasional task that had to be done by hand doing it the VirtualBox default way was a pain in the arse.
This issue on its own would not have caused me to switch from VirtualBox to KVM. It was just a side benefit. However, if you are Googling for answers to "how do I do 'x' over a network" the answers you find will be for the simpler of the two. That is of help when the objective is to get something done as opposed to learning about how something works in depth.
If you know how to solve this problem, that's great. Perhaps it could be the subject of a future article. It wouldn't make me switch back to VirtualBox, but I'm sure it would help someone else and at the least be a very interesting technical article for a lot of people to read.
I'm not suggesting that you need to switch from VirtualBox to KVM/VMM if VirtualBox does what you need and you are happy with it. I am however suggesting that I would not dismiss it from consideration by other people.
Now, Alma 10 had just come out and I need to set up a new VM for it using KVM/VMM. It should only take a few minutes.
> With regards to networking, if you wanted to SSH into a VirtualBox VM using the default networking set up, you had to do something like "ssh username@localhost -p 2222".
That is - sort of true.
If you leave the networking type at its default of "NAT" - which is "the simplest thing for a newbie to use to just get a 'normal' PC experience inside the guest, so we'll give it as the default", you *can* then do a load of clicks (or a number of CLI options if running VirtualBox that way) to set up port forwarding from localhost through to the guest's ssh port. In the advanced networking settings portion of VirtualBox. By which point saying "default networking set up" starts to feel strained.
Or just make the one network setting change, by using either of the non-NAT options in the combobox, then use ssh (and everything else) as if the guest was real, not in a VM.
End of technical article? Ok, didn't include pictures of where the combobox is, but it is the first thing in network options, way before you find the port forwarding settings.
Not wishing to be rude, but, um, I was so fascinated by your description that I ended up searching around to find out *how* to set that up: I've tested peer to peer protocols by firing up from five to twenty VirtualBox VMs (the lazy way, through the GUI - very crowded host desktop, with all the PuTTY sessions as well!) and had never even thought of looking at how to fiddle with the NAT in VirtualBox. So I guess I just learnt something new today.
PS just for context, I run KVM pretty much every day on the desktop, VirtualBox on a server (I know, wrong way round!) and am banging head on mapping IOMMU to physical ports on the back of the various cases.
> Perhaps there is a way to get VirtualBox to do that
@thames, I am beginning to think that you do not properly read the comments to which you are replying, as well as not properly reading the articles on which you are commenting.
> Perhaps it could be the subject of a future article.
It's not an article. It is a sentence.
Here is how to "get Virtualbox to do that".
1. Pick "Bridged networking."
2. There is no step two. You are done.
I already specified how to do it. Settings | Network | Pick the first NIC | change type of connection to Bridged.
That's it. It's considerably simpler than KVM+VMM, in my professional opinion.
If you need to script stuff, IMHO, _you are doing it wrong_.
Liam Proven said: If you need to script stuff, IMHO, _you are doing it wrong_.
As I said, I use VMs mainly for software testing. The entire test process is scripted and includes starting the VM, rolling back to the standard snapshot, loading and installing the software, running the tests, collecting the results, going on to the next VM, and creating a report at the end. For this sort of application scripting the process by ones means or another is normal practice. Manual intervention in this is limited to updating VMs, installing new versions, or developing and debugging new tests.
I don't want to leave the impression that I am critical of your article. It was very good and I found it to be very useful and hope to see more like this in future.
Read all the comments and must say some clarification is needed.
First, vBox is fully scriptable using the vbox cli tool VBoxManage. This cli tool can be used to control every facet of a VM, including the creation of and rolling back of snapshots. It is also used to control other settings of the VM and HDD, which are not available via the gui.
Networking in vBox is as dead simple; full stop. One simple click of a dropdown offers every common networking use case. For most people, simply choosing a bridged connection gives them a unique externally addressable addy. Thus, SSHing into a vBox is dead simple and typically does not require a socket as you suggest. The only time a socket is required is if you use a nonstandard port, as it seems you might be doing if you have to specify a socket as opposed to just an addy. But this is not unique to vBox, a socket is required for any SSH server that does not use the default port.
But to me, the real power of vBox is revealed when full control and flexibility over a VM are desired. vBox exposes every conceivable hardware setting of a machine, such as machine hardware uuid, HDD firmware level, and HDD serial number. In the past I've attempted to get access many hardware settings in vmware, but full hardware control was not exposed. vmware finally did expose the hardware uuid setting, but as I recall it was delivered to the VM in the typical MS manner where the bytes and byte blocks were switched around. With vBox, no such mental gymnastics are required.
Now all that said I wouldn't run a server rack in vBox. It's use case is desktop users such as developers, professionals, and home power users. This is where it excels. I design and write software for a living and have been using vBox since the early days. I typically run 10 VMs on vBox for several months before I have to reboot the host. For any hypervisor the key is, I think, to install as little software on the host as possible and allow the VMs to do the heavy lifting. That results in a stable host that allows the rebooting of wayward VMs.
"haven't tried out USB or disk sharing. There seem to be settings for it however in KVM VMM."
I have used disk sharing, and whilst it's simple and works, I've found it has some quirks. You will need to enable shared memory (it will tell you this).
I found that deleting files in the VM doesn't immediately reclaim space on the filesystem, that will happen when you shut the VM down. This isn't a problem for my use case, but may be for others. I haven't investigated this further.
The other problem I found is that if the shared filesystem is on a device encrypted with cryptsetup, it is possible to unmount the filesystem on the host system once the share is unmounted in the VM, but something I can't identify keeps hold of the cryptsetup block device and prevents you closing it. This is a big problem, I have to restart the whole computer to get round this. I don't share anything temporarily anymore.
VirtualBox has been trouble free for me when running XP, Win7, and Win10 on Linux Mint. There are scripts [cough] to help. WINE is good but support for networking and USB is...not there yet (at least, it wasn't the last time I checked). I run things like the Garmin Updater and Lightroom on Win10 in VirtualBox. Pretty much everything else I use is native Linux.
> niceties like automatic resizing of a graphical desktop
KVM machines do do this.
> bi-directional cut'n'paste
> access to shared drives on the host without needing a working network
Most handy! And probably why I just jump to using RDP on VMs and don't use the console beyond getting that set up.
> If you like it, by all means, use it.
I don't know if I *like* it, so much as it being a type 1 hypervisor that's available after adding a few packages then pretty much next, next, next in a UI that's pretty simple. Path of least resistance.
>WinApps sounds fun.
I had never heard of it and, this afternoon, i'm going to try it out.
I have to log into a Windows RDP server for ONE geriatric accounts package (which is oh soooo close to working in WINE, but hangs up trying to register it's licence!) and I've never gotten a published app to behave properly with freerdp.
Have tried Winapps.
Same issue I've always had trying to use xfreerdp client to a Windows app (looking at the scripts, it's just automating the stuff I've tried manually before, I was hoping I'd missed a trick). It works fine until you maximise the window and then try to go back to non-maximised, it glitches out and the native cursor no longer lines up with the remote session.
IIRC - it's fighting the window dressing.
> They mentioned Gnome Boxes, which is KVM,
Well, yes. Boxes uses KVM to create and manage VMs.
It is very much the GNOME way, in my personal opinion: use the "official" utility, Virt-Manager, and it exposes an overcomplex UI with lots of irrelevant options that I suspect most people do not need, such as complex management of storage pools.
Then replace this with the GNOME UI instead, and discover that it goes to the opposite extreme: suddenly, even basic configuration options are missing or deeply concealed. I want to specify how much RAM my VM has; this is important, and the defaults tend to be overcautious. No, I do not want to run Windows in 1GB of RAM, because I do not want to wait a week while it disk-thrashes on a host machine with 20 or 30GB of available RAM.
This is an endemic problem of Linux UIs: you tend to either get too much or too little, and there are few projects which attempt to strike a happy medium. In comparison, the commercial software vendors seem to spend money on testing and studies to work out what is needed and find the optimum.
Example:
KDE -- do you want 1, 2, 3 or 4 panels, or more? Centred, beginning of that edge, end of that edge, filling that edge? Floating, because that looks cool and WGAF about functionality anyway?
GNOME -- you get a top panel and a side panel. Don't like losing 2 screen edges? Sucks to be you, doesn't it, nerdboy. You think you know better than us? Go fsck yourself, luser.
Contrast with:
Windows 95: you get one panel and it's the whole screen edge, because we looked up Fitt's Law and know how it works. But we put *the* key control in one corner, because we know Fitt applies to more than 1 dimension. The panel's contents are in a fixed order, and they are in a fixed orientation, because we're American and we read left-to-right and one fixed direction works.
Everyone since Windows 95, including at Microsoft -- huh, what did those old guys know?
While I'll add "I haven't tried this" Liam's mention of the Windows product key in UEFI makes me wonder if a hypervisor like KVM might handle that better. They provide some direct access to hardware instead of emulating everything like VMs typically do, so maybe it offers to way to expose the native firmware to the Windows VM. If so a Windows guest could validate the product key that already exists rather than having to find a workaround.
My experience with KVM was not pleasant compared to VirtualBox. It was a total nightmare to get it working with USB peripherals and seemed to suffer with a storage leak as my root partition ran out of space after a dozen or so boots of a Windows 10 VM necessitating a recovery boot to clean up the mess.
The following boot up of the recovered system was quickly followed by an apt purge of KVM...
They still have free licencing for Fusion and Workstation (and I think ESXi might be returning to being free again), but they don't have many of the bells and whistles required for running production systems.
Broadcom massively increased costs on the licenced products (and took free ESXi licences away).
Different products.
The "free" is for desktop use like VMware Player which works just fine if you want to run Windows on your Linux box. The streaming about gouging is for ESX which is what you run on big iron to handle hundreds of VM on the same server, and link to other servers to allow live movement of running VMs and other other sorts of magic previously reserved for the mainframe world.
I used VMware on my desktop for many years but I wouldn't recommend it now because who knows if Broadcom will try to start charging for the free version, quit developing it, pull features, or let it bit rot so it becomes less and useful.
One annoying thing about VMware was/is that if you wanted to be on the bleeding edge kernel wise (i.e. you use something like Fedora, rather than slower moving distros that use LTS kernels) you may need to do a little patching to make VMware's kernel modules work with the new kernel version. There is (or at least was for years when I used to use it) a site where some guy who worked at Red Hat was making the patches available on his own time but it was an added hassle to the otherwise smooth "dnf update" process.
It was never free, it was always proprietary software - it was never gratis either, although a "trial" period is offered.
With proprietary software, the master of the software can gouge their fees for ??? and you have no choice but to pay unless you stop using it and swap to the free VM software you should have been using (which you may choose to pay for support for and support fees are hard to gouge, as you can just go to someone else or hire someone).
OK....so I do use WINE for two Windows programs (one from 1998 and one from 2006).
And WINE also runs Windows Multimedia Viewer (from 1993) like a champ.
But I also use native Linux apps as a workaround....and the workaround route is MUCH less work than WINE:
- LibreOffice is a useful replacement for MS Word. (If you are picky about DOCX formatting, LO may not be what you want.)
- Harbour is a splendid replacement for dBASE and FoxPro.....as long as all you need something running in a Linux terminal
- Chromium (or Firefox) replaces Edge
- Thunderbird replaces whatever email client you use on Windows
- Many Python3 programs will run on Windows and Linux with no change (....but testing is required)
...and I'm sure that there are plenty of workarounds that I haven't even dreamt about!
The key (in all the cases I've mentioned above) is the ironclad determination TO USE LINUX!!! My personal choice has been RedHat and Fedora since 1999!
The only fly in this ointment is that every time I buy a new retail machine (usually a new laptop these days)....the snag is my $100 going to Redmond.
If anyone can suggest how I buy a new laptop WITH NO OS licence on it, I'd be very interested!!
I've bought a Lenovo with no OS in Ireland, but next purchase it was cheaper to buy with Windows. I dual booted that for 2 months and then wiped Windows. I've rarely used XP (and even less often Win7 &10) in Virtual Box. USB devices mostly work on XP, if they worked on real XP, simply by USB device menu on Vbox while running. MS also has a tool Disk2VHD, which can clone XP, Vista and at least Win7, even on a PC that has UEFI, as long as windows was installed in Legacy Boot Mode. Cloned my dying 2002 XP laptop and a not very old Win7 tower (that does support UEFI, but the installer had used Legacy Boot).
The 32 bit VB6 programs using OCX like for serial port won't work on 64 bit Win7 or Win 10 (they do work on 32 bit versions). MS offers Vbox for those. They mostly work on WINE.
You may need to set an environment variable to install 32bit WINE support, which is more useful than 64 bit and that can be added later. Some old Multimedia Windows may also need an old Netscape installed. The 16 bit windows can run in DosBox, but some might work on 32 bit WINE?
"I've bought a Lenovo with no OS in Ireland, but next purchase it was cheaper to buy with Windows."
From what little I know of the process, the Windows licence on a new device, especially from the global OEMs, costs very little and is more than offset by the payments from other vendors to get their bloatware added to the pre-build, eg trial versions of s/w etc. allowing the OEM to lower the price of the final device by some smallish margin. An OS-free device doesn't have the paid-for bloatware and so ends up costing more. The interesting thing with Lenovo though is that they use Linux themselves so mostly their hardware is supported with Linux drivers, eg you can download their own diagnostics package which is a Linux boot image direct into their hardware diags app. I'm less sure about HP or Dell, although both seem to dabble a little in supplying some models with Linux pre-installed.
> If anyone can suggest how I buy a new laptop WITH NO OS licence on it, I'd be very interested!!
I've never quite understood this TBH.
MS subsidises hardware markers. For those little stickers that say "designed for Windows $WHATEVER" they get a cut.
I almost never buy new anyway. But if it costs more to buy bare hardware, why bother?
Around the world, several vendors sell laptops with FreeDOS. That's an easy way how to buy a machine with no paid OS on it.
Ok not a laptop but I bought a micro pc (8gb ram, 256gb ssd) from amazon a few months back. Had win 11 on it which got nuked and mint installed but it was 100 euros or so and works a treat. I just used an old TV which had HDMI ports for the display and had a mouse and keyboard lying around.
Hardware is now so cheap that you can cobble pretty much anything together without having to raid the piggy bank.
> £100 to £120 less than with Windows Pro.
Blimey. You like expensive toys!
The last few Thinkpads I bought cost about that _in total_.
I've mentioned them as they are FOSS desk testbeds:
i5 T420: about £100
i7 T420 plus i7 W520: about £250 the pair.
i7 X220: I went crazy and bought on the Isle of Man. £250, but it did have a docking station and was mint.
> I bet they came with built in Ethernet too.
Of course. Full size, no dongles needed. Two of them, when docked. (I've not checked to see if they work independently TBH.)
A friend from the OpenBSD team showed me the "Ethernet" port on his T-series and it's a super-slimline thing that needs a special Lenovo adapter. What a horrible stupid move! At least a fold-down RJ45 jack lets you use a standard cable. Even my cheap Dell has that.
And both VGA and DisplayPort, and a USB 3 port, and as well as that, one always-on USB for charging your phone.
I mainly use them for the keyboards, but the range of ports is great too. It baffles me why Lenovo would throw away such selling points. All right, fine, sell cheap consumer boxes without this stuff, but at least keep a pro model -- or better still, pro range -- available.
"i5 T420: about £100
i7 T420 plus i7 W520: about £250 the pair."
Nice :-)
Just spent about £250 on an L14 which has TPM 2.0 so can still run Win11[*]. Near perfect condition. If TPM 2,0 is not an issue, yeah you can get decent power and specs for much less :-)
* replacement for wifes laptop, and no, making things "complicated" with VMs, Wine etc is NOT an option for her :-(
It shall be explained to you.
If you purchase a computer with no OS on it, microsoft has minimal chance of subjecting you to their malicious software or their proprietary restrictions.
Unfortunately, often doing so doesn't reduce much, or at all, the amount of money that is paid to microsoft, as they have made predatory agreements with the bean counters of many computer companies, where in exchange for a discount to the large windows tax, a payment is made per unit for every computer sold, whether it comes with windows, no OS, or another OS.
If you are going to purchase a new laptop, maybe it'll be a better idea to purchase a computer with windows on it, but refuse to accept the terms and demand a refund for the windows price (but I wouldn't, as all the new AMD64 laptops sold in shopping center stores etc are handcuffed to only run proprietary software hardware init).
microsoft may offer a further windows tax discount for a sticker, but it is ludicrous to suggest that microsoft would pay for a computer to run windows (microsoft has a unique chokehold - while microsoft gets paid for companies to exclusively use windows, Intel had to pay Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC etc to get them to exclusively use Intel processors).
If you purchase a computer with "Free"DOS on it, you have paid to have it installed.
Some vendors also sell computers that come with GNU/Linux, but microsoft has been doing their best to prevent that, or also receive payment for that.
Accept that the device manufacturer gets incentivised to include various things - not just MS crud, but antivirus, VPN, spotify, etc, etc.
As you're just going to wipe the drive anyway, that doesn't affect you beyond the fact that those vendors have paid something towards your device. It'll be a pittance, but it's something.
It's really not your money that's going to Microsoft (and it's definitely nowhere near $100 - closer to $10 for OEM) - all the other interested parties subsidise that so they can get their junk on more devices and therefore sell subscriptions.
May I suggest asking around for Windows users who are replacing their hardware, either because the old stuff is "too slow" or they MUST have Windows 11? You may be able to get a 3-5 year old machine for free.
I haven't bought a machine in well over 10 years; relatives keep giving me their "too slow" laptops, which run Ubuntu beautifully.
<< May I suggest asking around for Windows users who are replacing their hardware >>
I reckon come October (2025) there will be a good number of Windows 10 (non-W11 capable) machines available. I would not be surprised if some entrepreneur didn't buy a ton, install Linux on them, and try to make a killing.
Look out for PCs on eBay etc basically from now onwards as enterprises complete their windows 11 upgrade programmes. The quickest ones will be just about finishing now (this of course ignores the ones that have been doing gradual rollouts but that's just background turnover) whilst the slowest will be finished around the end of December. Those who go longer will either likely be paying for extended updates or will not care and will be flogging their systems to death anyway so you'd never see them on the retail market.
I ran SCO FoxPlus for Xenix for years. It was excellent and ran flawlessly on FreeBSD. It did however fall into the hands of Microsoft and later appeared as FoPro Unix (!?!?), which was excellent. In fact I think I may still have the documentation set somewhere. However after Microsoft discontinued it I moved to Harbour. We still use it today. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs to get a text mode multi-user system up-and-running in short order.
"...you can even install Edge in Linux."
I do this to keep work separate from personal (and because it amuses me to run Microshaft's browser in FOSSland). Firefox for personal, Edge for work. It's been a few years since I tried, so maybe this has changed, but I found that only the flatpak version will allow you to sign into the browser with a corporate MS account.
"If anyone can suggest how I buy a new laptop WITH NO OS licence on it, I'd be very interested!!"
System76 is the only one I know of (they ship with Linux). Unfortunately, they're a small shop, so you won't be saving much money if any. Great products though!
> "If anyone can suggest how I buy a new laptop WITH NO OS licence on it, I'd be very interested!!"
> System76 is the only one I know of (they ship with Linux)...
For those who live in Europe, there is a Spanish company, Slimbook, https://slimbook.com/en/
"If anyone can suggest how I buy a new laptop WITH NO OS licence on it, I'd be very interested!!"
This may be an option: 'Laptop with Linux' - https://laptopwithlinux.com/
I haven't used them, but am considering them for a possible future purchase. Their machines are fairly customisable, and you can go for a blank system drive instead of a pre-installed OS (of which they offer several flavours of Linux to choose from).
> It's to make Windows users feel more at home ;)
I see what you did there. :-D
TBH I think I suggested the reboot at the wrong point in the cycle. What I have seen a few times now, and it's a bit odd, is that you install an app into WINE, but it does not appear in the OS's app launcher, or menu or whatever, until you reboot. _Then_ the Windows app becomes available.
But, TL;DR, yeah a reboot still helps sometimes.
You can also just log out of your GUI and back in, and you should get almost all of the same benefits (e.g. if menu rebuild only happens on login) - as the app launcher belongs to the DE, not the OS
It's only if there's kernel/modules/init changes (or services that are enabled but not started) that a full reboot is required (barring live kernel updates which exclude even kernel - the rest theoretically can be updated in place)
Depending on $things and $stuff, logging out & in to the DE might not be significantly faster than a full reboot though
> a full reboot is required
I know that, you know that, but it takes skill and judgement to know when it is or isn't.
I hang out in a lot of Linux fora across the internet and the most F of FAQs is along the lines of:
"X doesn't work"
[many posts of troubleshooting]
"Oh, I rebooted and it is working now!"
The erroneous message is out there that Linux doesn't need rebooting and people are installing apps, drivers, OS updates, all kinds, and expecting things will just work immediately without further intervention. It ain't necessarily so.
Just tell 'em to reboot in case.
This is about GUI desktops, not servers. There shouldn't be any background stuff to disrupt, no other users.
Also, many machines are set to auto-login. Users aren't use to seeing a login screen at all. Multiple distros do this by default. Another complication.
Reboots are free.
Remember the IT Crowd?
"Have you tried turning it off and back on again? Yeah? Good! You're welcome, mate."
Just reboot the damned thing and don't fret about whether it was strictly necessary.
WINE optionally supports interfacing with a Linux module for screen recording I believe (but otherwise it does not talk to Linux).
If you want to use that, you'd need to reboot if the module is not included in the distribution of the kernel, Linux you use and you install a different one (with it), or you compile it in as a module and it doesn't want to load without the main elf being updated.
I actually paid for a licence a few years ago just to see how well it worked. I was actually quite impressed.
Fortunately I never really had any Windows applications I needed.
The only time I actually seriously used Codeweavers was to run a fairly old Windows version of Acrobat Reader to access an old and peculiar pdf document that Evince etc wouldn't touch. The last version (4?) of Acrobat Reader for Linux was too old.
The downside of running Windows in a virtual machine just for a single application is the rigamarole of starting the VM, logging into Windows, running the particular application and connecting it to the required resources in both the host and guest environments.
Anyone who built a tool that would encapsulate the process so that running something like:
/opt/vm-winapps/bin/powerpoint mypresentation.ppt†
that would just pop a a window with Windows powerpoint open on "mypresentation" running on a VM could be on a winner.
I can vaguely see how you might do it with a stripped down Windows instance (a server version?) in a VM to which an automatically logged in, rdp session, starts the required app.
† not that I have ever used powerpoint.
> Anyone who built a tool that would encapsulate the process so that running something like:
VMware Fusion (on the Mac) can run a Windows app without the surrounding VM "furniture" showing. You still have to have the VM running (but that can be a startup item and then it idles) and when you run the Windows app it appears alongside the Mac apps as if it were a regular Mac app. Presumably the Linux version can do something similar?
> VMware Fusion (on the Mac) can run a Windows app without the surrounding VM "furniture" showing.
I've been trying it.
Modern Windows' 3D compositing seems to break it. So does the Retina display of my Mac. It says it's running in Seamless mode and I can get at the Start menu, maybe, sometimes, but apps don't show up.
Even 128MB of VM VRAM wasn't enough for a Retina display _guest_ and disabling HiDPI in the guest helped and made it a lot quicker, seamless mode still didn't work.
I fear modern display tech has broken this once-handy technology.
It was a crying shame when VMware pulled seamless applications from their hypervisor. It used to work really well, too, including file type association.
That alone would be enough for most people to switch.
Take a look at WinApps - https://nowsci.com/winapps/ - it almost works well enough to be a production solution but unfortunately the quirks still don't make it quite ready (or didn't when I last tried it at the start of the year).
> It was a crying shame when VMware pulled seamless applications from their hypervisor. It used to work really well, too, including file type association.
It has not pulled it from the Mac version. It's still there. It's in VirtualBox as well.
What I have said several times now is that it's there _but it does not work any more_.
> I thought most VM solutions had native GPU pass through
"Most"? I would tend to doubt that.
> and the technology isn't emulation per se.
Ohhhhhhh yes it is.
> Am I missing something?
Well, quite a lot, TBH.
As Ben Goldacre says, "I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that."
1. What sort of hypervisor?
2. What sort of guest OS?
3. What sort of GPU?
4. For what sort of purpose?
Enterprise hypervisors on servers can do this, yes. Servers don't tend to have displays. Therefore the GPU isn't doing its normal job: displaying stuff. That in turn means that you may want the GPU for CUDA type stuff, running GPGPU code, for example for LLMs -- "AI" tools -- and you don't want it to show anything on any display.
That means the GPU is not shared. The host isn't using it at all and the guest is not using it to show a desktop. So you can just hand the whole GPU over to the guest OS and run number-crunching code on it.
That is a specialised use case but it's easy. So it's in wide use in industry.
But not on the desktop!
On the desktop is _very_ different. Your computer has a display. It's using it, all the time, to show its desktop. So it can't pass that GPU through to a VM, because it's in use. It can't be shared. 2 computers can't use the same GPU at once. How could that work? One gets the first 50% of the pixels on each line and the other gets the 2nd half? That's silly. Anyway modern GPUs are throwing shaded triangles at the screen, not pixels. That is how display compositing works: the OS renders rectangles of pixels into lots of buffers in RAM and the GPU renders those onto flat rectangles and then it renders those rectangles on top of each other into a virtual displayport and then it samples that and bungs it down a wire onto a display output.
So, no, no GPU sharing in desktop hypervisors.
No, the d/t h/v presents _emulated_ hardware to VMs: an emulated motherboard with an emulated chipset with emulated PCI slots with emulated hard disks on them, emulated CD-ROMs, emulated sound cards, and an emulated GPU. If you enable 3D acceleration, which is an optional item and off by default because it breaks, a lot, all the time, then the guest emulated GPU takes 3D API calls and the hypervisor uses the host's 3D API to accelerate rendering those calls into a subwindow, a virtual buffer inside a virtual buffer.
The only change around 20Y ago is that before that, you emulated the CPU as well. Then Intel noticed everyone was doing that a lot now and added in hardware CPU virtualisation. Now the guest sees the real host CPU and runs real code on real metal, in a safe sandbox.
Everyone else could do that already: POWER, PowerPC, Arm, MIPS, whatever. Only Intel couldn't. As I described in detail about a decade ago.
Crap, nearly 15Y ago.
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2011/07/11/a_brief_history_of_virtualisation_part_one/
Great explanation.
However, I've been running KVM with GPU passthrough for (quick check) 10 years and none of these limitations were much of a problem, because I chose not to fight the battles I might not win.
The GPUs are dedicated to VMs, and so are the displays. The host runs headless (kernel booted with `video=efifb:off`). I use IPMI to manage it from any other laptop or computer I have at home.
Sharing filesystem between host and Windows guest ? Samba. Between host and Linux guest ? virtiofs . Sharing copy & paste ? No need, the host is headless. Authentication ? Like any other small network, samba AD.
It might not look as sexy as having two OSes visible on one monitor, but performance is peerless. Working, or playing a game, on a VM with its own dedicated (and decently sized) GPU, with its own dedicated display, you wouldn't be able to say that it's a VM. Given enough resources obviously.
One downside - putting these resources in a single computer typically means it will be big, probably noisy, and definitely more expensive that typical desktop.
> I thought most VM solutions had native GPU pass through
Not all. The usual suspects like Virtualbox and VMWare doesn't. The ones that do - Qemu via KVM - requires you to sacrifice the GPU to the VM in entirety even if the VM isn't running if I understand the Looking Glass project documentation right. This isn't an acceptable solution to folks who want to dynamically repurpose the GPU as needed, say maybe use the GPU in Linux if no VM is running. Maybe in the future Linux (and BSD and illumos) would gain the ability to "lease" hardware out to VMs and reclaim them as needed. But that functionality doesn't exist at the moment.
Nah, I don't buy Nvidia cards on the grounds that they cost 5 digits cash at where I used to live.
I use AMD almost exclusively now. The only Nvidia things I have is my Nintendo Switch which is only ever explicitly used for Animal Crossing, and an old Shield Pro which I use to put on live youtube and twitch streams as background noise when I sleep.
"And, of course, you need a license for your guest Windows OS. Even if the machine has a Windows license in its firmware, which many UEFI machines will have ... a VM can't see the real machine's real firmware"
AIUI it's possible to create a virtual disk from an existing Windows intallation - not something I've tried. If this is done with a WIndows installation which has already been set up with its licence key can it then be run as an already licenced Windows instance in Virtualbox?
> AIUI it's possible to create a virtual disk from an existing Windows intallation
It is.
> not something I've tried.
No, me neither.
> can it then be run as an already licenced Windows instance in Virtualbox
No, I would not expect so. Windows fingerprints the hardware and its activation status is tied to that hardware. Change more than 1 or 2 elements of the hardware and it de-activates itself and you need to re-activate.
An OEM licence key, e.g. in system firmware, generally does not permit this. It's tied to that device.
The VM is an emulated PC: totally different hardware. Windows will no longer be activated. You'll probably need a new license to do it. Or, and of course I can't recommend or endorse this, you'd need a crack to do a totally naughty pirate activation.
Tangentially related: About 4 months ago, I built a desktop gaming pc for a friend, and I used clonezilla to copy the hard drive from his old and tired gaming laptop into the new desktop. I fully expected the OEM Windows install to scream about having all new hardware, but to this day, it never has. His Windows install still shows as activated in the desktop, and he even still uses the laptop occasionally.
I told him I don't expect this to work forever, but so far, so good...
https://www.portingkit.com/
Have used this as well which is also free, to run some older Fallout games (3 and NV) on an Intel Macbook Pro (latest macOS using OCLP) because I just like making it difficult.
It is macOS only but worth a consideration if anyone has a killer Windows app and is ditching Redmond for Cupertino.
Was talk of a beta for Linux but haven't seen anything on it recently.
I have one: Magix Vegas 19. I have tried to wrap my head around Cinelerra but it's difficult (you complain about GIMP's UI being illogical? How quaint. Becase Cinelerra is windowing hell and needs at least two monitors to be even remotely usable) and has many missing features. KDenLive doesn't cut it either (it's not as powerful, and the latest version has broken hardware encoding and acceleration), and the Linux version of DaVinci Resolve is hopeless in all caps (can't support H.264 and derivatives like AVC, or AAC audio. Meaning videos made by 95% of devices in the market can't be opened). And Magix doesn't seem to want to do anything to make it compatible with Wine.
PS: The article says Steam is a subscription service. This is blatantly wrong. You don't pay a monthly fee to use Steam. It's a storefront.
ISTR it no longer runs on the 8086 :-)
Anything that uses a newer processor is probably OK. I recently installed a stripped down Slackware on a (very) old VIA board to use it as a TFTP server. Worked perfectly.
Where I used to work, we did embedded designs for clients. We gave Microsoft's "embedded" OS offerings a try, but between the absolutely incomprehensible (and expensive) licensing, the lack of support (or even interest in talking with us), and the vulnerabilities (who leaves autorun active in an embedded OS?), we started to try Linux. Which is now all we use. It's really, from an embedded POV at least, Windows without all the hassle. Sure, it requires some configuration, but when all you need is a basic OS with GUI features, it worked out well for us.
It needs a MMU (µCLinux is a separately maintained patchset), a 586 or newer (or newer ARM CPU etc), 128MiB+ of RAM (although it will work on less with really cut down images, it has really bloated up so much now that Linux+Linux(initramfs) won't even fit into 128MiB of RAM), a 100MHz+ CPU (a slower one will technically work if you don't mind waiting hours for boot, but really you want a faster one), and an init that launches the rest of the OS (GNU or BusyBox) it needs (otherwise it just shuts down).
There are only a few Windows applications that I still run because I haven't found equivalents for in Linux. There's the Kedit editor, simply because I have so many macros written over the years, there's the Take Command shell, for the similar reason of having hundreds of scripts (some many hundreds of lines long) that aren't easily, or possibly, rewritten in Bash or Python. Both work fine under Wine.
The only other Windows app I used is something called Gentibus, an app that archives media, ie. CD/DVD/hard disk contents in a proprietary database format. Although there's an app called Katalog that does the same thing, sort of, a catalog of 400,000 elements on a SATA 2TB disk that takes 5 seconds to bring up in Gentibus takes almost 15 minutes to load in Katalog.
Unfortunately, it won't run in Wine, because installing it includes a DLL that co-exists with Windows just fine, but crashes under Wine.
I tried running Windows in a VM, but discovered that for some reason, both Windows 7 and Windows 10 wouldn't set screen resolution to anything over 1280x1024, and the Windows 10 disk was thrashing constantly, which appears to be common, but not universal problem.
Fortunately, I had an old machine lying around, so I found a much simpler solution. Just configure the Windows machine with a static IP in your local subnet, but remove the gateway address. Windows will be able to communicate only within the local subnet, and not to the internet. Install OpenSSH, and you can remote in via SSH for terminal applications. If you have a Windows Professional licence, you can access it via Remmina; if it's a Windows Home licence, there's VNC, Anydesk, or NoMachine. Make it a SAMBA server, or make your Linux machine a SAMBA server and make the Windows PC a SAMBA client, and you can run the Windows apps without issue.
Running things under Wine or a VM is preferred, but I've seen people spend literally weeks trying to get a troublesome Windows app running properly under Wine, or getting the VM configuration right, when they had an old PC just lying around that they could have repurposed and solved their problem in an hour.
I've used the Windows-in-a-VM approach for a while. For sharing files, I run a Samba server in the Linux environment, and then it is visible from the windows VM as a Windows share. Voila, can now receive Word attachments in email, save them in the Samba shared area, start Windows. edit in Word. and then email them back from the Ubuntu environment, and they are all nicely saved in the same Dropbox environment as the other critical stuff.
The Samba configuration allows you to block connections from anywhere except the subnet used by the Virtual Machine (in my case 192.168.122.0/24) and the firewall on your Linux environment has to allow traffic from this subnet.
I have not tested it with Virtualbox or VMWare, but see no reason why it wouldn't work (though you would need to adjust network access rules to match your VM's address).
I stopped using Virtualbox when I heard that Oracle treated it as Extortionware unless you were very careful how you used it. In practice the non-commercial virtualisation software (QEMU/KVM) is fine for what I do.
> start Windows. edit in Word
Why not just run Word under WINE? Then no export/import or file sharing is needed. It's one of the apps that in my experience works fine.
> I heard that Oracle treated it as Extortionware unless you were very careful how you used it
You heard wrong. It is FOSS. I specifically called this out in the article and described the issue in detail. Just the extension pack is proprietary and you don't need it. Indeed in recent versions it will do USB 2 and even USB 3 without the extension pack.
Last time I tried Word and Excel under Wine (admittedly a long time ago) it was problematic. That said, I'll give it another go and see if things have improved.
My own use of Virtualbox (running various options including networking VMs in various ways - it's too long ago to remember the details) left me requiring the extensions - and I promptly stopped when I understood the licensing regime. In any commercial environment I would be very cautious, particularly if the less experienced team members are installing the software on their own machines and you cannot guarantee that they won't check the wrong boxes. how Oracle uses licensing
The aim of the post was to highlight that file sharing between Windows and Linux environments is easy enough, so editing documents using a full-function recent Office release is easy.
For gaming I recommend checking out Proton using the Steam client. A Steam account is free & you can add non-steam games to the Steam launcher UI.
Its not perfect - nothing is - but I dropped Win 10 on my gaming PC towards the end of last year for Ubuntu 24.10, now 25.04, and haven't regretted it.
The PC itself is only used as a gaming rig, it doesn't do anything else, which makes life easier.
The ProtonDB website is pretty accurate for what works, what doesn't, and what needs tweaking in the options - mostly via user reports.
Steam (Valve) themselves have contributed a lot to Proton, which leverages WINE. A lot of that is because of the Steam Deck handheld console - its operating system, SteamOS, is based on Arch Linux. Every non-Linux binary (realistically pretty much every game you're going to play) on the Steam Deck is running via Proton. Impressive stuff and I'm looking forward to trying a PC-based SteamOS should it ever appear.
The only sticking point for some could be non-FOSS drivers for the all important graphics card. There are FOSS ones for Nvidia cards in Ubuntu which might be good enough for depending on what you're playing but I tend to stick with the Nvidia closed-source drivers using whichever the latest version Ubuntu offers within its settings. Also a few hoops to jump through - command line wise - to install 32bit graphics driver compatibility for the Steam client but all pretty easy stuff, and documented, so not too daunting. The other gotcha to watch out for is that ideally for best performance your games need to be installed on a Linux partition (eg Ext4) and not NTFS, which once committed to Linux could be a lot of reinstalling/downloading.
What I did before ditching Windows is found a small SATA SSD drive I happened to have kicking around, installed my chosen Linux OS/Steam/etc on that + a few games, and then tried it for a few weeks before making the jump.
A lot of Steam games use cloud storage to hold saved game progress so that can take some pain out of jumping if you're already invested using the Steam storefront under Windows.
YMMV but I'm glad I made the move, happy days with no Windows cruft.
I jumped about 18 months ago now, and it's all been fairly smooth. Some new releases (at the time) had many Windows users complaining about things like crashing, stuttering GFX etc, and waiting for patches etc, but they ran fine on Linux without those issues, at least for me! So it can actually be quite good on Linux.
Just on this : Quote: 'The other gotcha to watch out for is that ideally for best performance your games need to be installed on a Linux partition (eg Ext4) and not NTFS, which once committed to Linux could be a lot of reinstalling/downloading.'
Agree on the Ext4 etc. Don't use NTFS for Linux Steam!
But a tip on the reinstalling/downloading side.
If moving OS on the same machine, and you have the drive space, you can just mount the NTFS drives in Linux, and just copy/paste the Windows Steam game installs onto the Ext4 drive, or even somewhere temp, like a NAS or external drive first, then a local Ext4 drive afterwards (such as if planning to reformat the original NTFS to Ext4).
Although this is likely only worth doing if it's a large game, and depending on your Internet speed etc.
For ref, the installed game files for Windows games are literally the same irrespective of being installed under Steam within Windows, or Steam within Linux. So you can just copy the game directory straight from the NTFS drive, onto an Ext4 drive, and Steam will use the files as-is.
So as an example, you might have games in Windows here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common
So just boot into Linux, mount the drive (for example in Mint the NTFS drives are just listed in the file explorer under Devices, just click the drive wanted to mount and access). Browse to the Windows game install locations, i.e. under 'common' above, find the game/games you want (say 'Fallout 4', and just copy the game folder to the new Ext 4 location.
e.g. : /home/<username>/.steam/steam/steamapps/common
Tip: Don't bother copying any other files from Steam, as they'll just be recreated anyway. You just need the game folders (and potentially save games if not using cloud saves).
Once the game has been copied, just go into Steam in Linux (it won't know the game is there yet), pick the game in the Library, click install, and make sure you select the drive you copied the files to, if not the default location (i.e. if using a separate SteamLibrary), and it will change from installing, to verifying instead. Once verified, you are good to go. (If doesn't switch to verifying, then there might be a path issue, or permissions, but as long as you copied the files under the same account you use Steam under, it should be fine).
I'm a hoarder, and also replay some games over and over (strategy games etc), so tend to have lots of games installed at the same time, so this saved me many hours of downloading and installing. Just a quick local M.2 NVME transfer (or SATA SSD), a verify, and done.
Tip: Adding 'gamemoderun %command%' without quotes, to the game launch options, can help gaming performance (any game, including native Linux), but it's hit and miss as to how much, if at all.
Have fun!
Proton-GE tends to make life easier compared to vanilla proton (and especially compared to wine*)
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom
As for dual booting, can be superbly annoying if you travel, as Linux and Windows behave differently in interpreting the hardware clock to system clock / network time conversion wrt timezones.
Lots of fun with MFA apps that rely on accurate system time.
Then there's the risky cycle
- Boot linux
- Boot windows (and miss** stopping the sneaky firmware updates)
- Boot linux and fail because firmware crippled grub or killed a device in ways that windows doesn't mind
The advent of fw-upd has removed one reason to boot into windows, updating uefi/firmware, which now works less catastrophically on linux (mostly, for Lenovo it can be a hit and miss in resetting boot loaders)
* Likely my own lack of skills showing, but I never get wine to work reliably, whereas proton 'just works' (tm). Not a reflection on wine, on which proton is built iirc.
** There's probably a way to tell Windows to not update, I haven't found it yet, and almost never use it, so even less likely to find it now
I use the VM for my slide and negative scanner. W10 with no network access. I did used to use it for Chitubox, but now moving to a different slicer.
I use WINE for Sillouette Studio for a craft cutter (model railoway bits).
I use Proton for Half Life and friends.
Most things are native.
If like me, you had a functioning laptop running Windows (for certain definitions of "functioning") and enough spare hard disk space, I would recommend installing Linux as dual boot and just dip back into full windows once in a while when you need to.
It's incredibly easy to do and there are plenty of guides online how to do it. If you have that odd windows app that you don't want to lose yet, just leave the windows install to boot into every now and again when you want to. You already have a functioning Windows license and installation so nothing more to do.
My install of mint will automatically detect and mount the windows partition so if you use the windows app to create something, you can easily read it from Linux. It's also a safe option in case you aren't totally confident with switching systems just yet - it gives you that safety net and a route back if you decide Linux isn't for you.
I did this ages ago, because there was a windows app that I couldn't find a simple Linux replacement for. It was the one thing that was holding me back from going to linux. But I did it anyway and then one day I did find a Linux replacement for that app. The windows partition still lounges in the corner of the hard drive. If one day I decide I want to reclaim the 100MB or so it's using, I will do, but for now, I can't be bothered.
If you are replacing the old hardware with new, it still might be worth exploiting the way Microsoft subsidises laptops to grab one with a licensed windows, dual boot install Linux anyway and just use Windows for that odd app you can't move to Linux.
Granted, if you have lots of Windows stuff you want to keep using, dual booting into windows more often than Linux kind of takes away the point of going Linux in the first place. In which case, I refer you back to the other options in the excellent article.
I've been working with various Unixen for a living since the mid 1990s. I have been using Linux as my sole OS since 2012 (mostly on a fairly simple laptop) as God intended. I've consisently gotten much more use out of inexpensive hardware running Linux than from the same kit burdened with the horrors from Redmond. But the people who paid for my meal ticket required me to run some Windows applications as well, so I've been up and down this road for quite a few years. Which is why I am about to air an opinion here.
First off, WINE works, up to a point. Some applications work well (games, mostly) but some can be a tad instable, and they tend to crash at the worst possible moments. Or some features work well while others don't at all. For years I've battled to get Photoshop CS6 working without crashing every time I used the 'save for web' option. Only recently, on Mint Wilma, with Wine 9.0 I've got it running to the point where I can actually use it. (Yes: just in time for Gimp 3 / PhotoGimp to largely erase the advantages of that accomplishment.) There are still a few minor issues, mostly when document windows overlap and the focused window drops to the background for no reason at all, but I can live with that. In fact all issues I've had so far with CS6 have to do with document windows being positioned on the screen, or with screen updates (especially when I enable the AMD Radeon GPU) but none of that has been a real stumbling block - for me. I understand what causes it and I know how to work around it, although there are quite a few rough edges here and there.
However, I only got it working after installing a whole slew of dependencies, following various instructions in various forums (but none of the "tips" on the WineHQ forums worked for me) and tweaking other things. In short, it was a major PITA. If it weren't for the fact that I've been doing surgery on OS environments since the early 1990s (including reverse-engineering and debugging IBM PC/XT BIOS EPROMs) and I'd gotten to a point where this had become a "Give me glory or give me death" type of personal matter) I'd probably have thrown in the towel again. It took forever to get it working properly, and the things I've had to do shouldn't be done to Sodom and Gomorrah.
With other thing (e.g. MS Office) I've been completely unsuccessful; even the installers won't run without crashing. I'm sure that has to do with dependencies as well, but which one, and what to do about it, usually remains unclear. WINE crashes with error messages that are sometimes partially informative at best, and not all dependencies in WINE can actually be resolved. And don't even get me started on trying to run 64-bit Windows applications in WINE; WineTricks still only properly supports 32-bit dependencies, and trying to properly install all dependencies in a 64-bit barrel of Wine by hand is enough to drive one into rampant alcoholism.
So let me be plain: I would never presume to inflict this on the average user. I need to be able to sleep at night, and just suggesting that people who come fresh off Windows go down this road is not something I can do in good conscience. And I'm a Linux enthusiast!
Also keep in mind that if you want to support any oddball hardware that comes with Windows drivers, WINE is useless. It simply won't work since WINE doesn't work that way. So don't count on being able to run your favourite DVD ripper software that way. Which you may want to do, since there is no such software that runs natively on Linux, AFAIK.
I've also run Windows 10 (and later Ghost Spectre Windows 11) in VirtualBox. That worked a lot better (i.e. all applications work as they should) but the performance penalty was always considerable. Windows alone can cause smoke to come pouring from the computer's fan exhaust ports; running Windows virtualized on top of Linux is far, far worse. Harddisk I/O is a major (but not the only) bottleneck. Unless you have a decent SSD in your machine (which rules out most inexpensive refurbished laptops) it's a nightmare; starting Windows in the VM can freeze the host OS for minutes while Windows has the HD between its teeth. Even without that, performance is way down; system load is considerable, and memory restrictions are an issue since you now have to share the available RAM between two OSes which usually forces both into paging, thus exacerbating the HD I/O bottleneck problem. It worked - but using it was even more painful than running Windows natively. The only consolation I can offer here is that virtualization automatically sandboxes Windows, so if when it goes haywire it's just an application to Linux and you can kill it.
But my main issue there has been the use of hardware configuration software. I already mentioned that WINE has no USB support at all, but devices that come with their own WIndows drivers (e.g. GSM modules, certain industrial microcontroller systems or other non-standard / specialized kit) is unlikely to work in VirtualBox since the USB port is virtualized and not all drivers that come with custom hardware plays nicely with that sort of thing. I've had to resort to native Windows quite a few times (for which I had to keep a spare laptop at the bottom of the desk drawer since I hate dual boot*) simply to configure GSM units and a security system or two.
So yes, it can be done... But you really have to want to do it that way. I'd hate to have to support one of my customers' efforts in that direction - it would probably drive both of us bonkers.
* It takes up valuable disk space that is difficult to reclaim; I need to shut down Linux on which I have tons of stuff and server processes open all the time, and switching simply takes too much time. So dual boot is not for me.
We've been waiting for well over 10 years for Adobe to support Linux. Is there some kind of corporate tie-in to Microsoft?
The one app that we use that has kept us tied to Windows is the current version of the entire Creative Suite.
Adobe products need direct access to the GPU, so VMs won't work.
Wine seems to support old versions of Photoshop - grudgingly. But what about Premiere Pro? After Effects? Audition?
Steam makes a relatively easy entry point for all sorts of windows apps.
On Linux is known for being incredibly successful at running games, 'cos Steam Deck.
What isn't that known is it's ability to run a lot of windows productivity apps flawlessly.
After all, it's wine under the hood.
I'd argue this is a sort of fourth way to do it.
The nice thing is you don't need to dick about with wine - if you have Steam on your Linux box, which I suspect a great deal of nerds do, you can just use the steam menu
"Games" > "Add a non-steam game to my library"
Steam Proton and Bottles got me curious now.
I assume that whatever runs on Steam Deck with Linux should have a shoe in Proton and should work OOB.
I also assume that Doom and Quake should also work out of the box and natively on Linux, just because these had the source code made available.
When the time comes, I am coming back here and doing research on my own.
Honestly, if I get Steam working with most games, I would be inclined to ditch the crude mess of Windows behind me like it was a wartime PTSD.
On the other hand, fiddling with autoexec.bat and config.sys left me with a bad taste in my mouth 20 years ago, and if a single Linux Distro forces me to open a .INI or .conf file or whatever to tweak stuff manually, I'm gonna scream profanities into the wind.
I'm gonna wait, and see what happens.
If a game is marked as 'Verified' for 'STEAM DECK COMPATIBILITY', then as a certain studio head some times has said, 'it just works'.
Note, often a lack of Verified for the Deck, simply means the game doesn't like the Decks control system, or the screen res, rather than an actual incompatibility with Proton/Linux itself.
Go have a look on Protondb to see what works and what doesn't, they also differentiate between Steam Deck, and just regular desktop Linux.
If you link your Steam account, it can check your existing Library as well, although be aware, the site works on reports sent in by users, so if games are really old, so no current users, there may not be any reports for it, so if you've had Steam a while, a library check might look worse than it actually is!
The only current games that tend to have issues, are some competitive multiplayer games, as some of these have horrible anti-cheat systems that can hook into the Windows kernel, and those don't work via Proton. Examples of borked games being PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Destiny 2. So if you don't play these type of games, you'll likely be fine.
As a general rule, if it doesn't work under regular Proton, try experimental (you can set a default Proton in Steam, and also per game if needed).
If that doesn't work, grab GE-Proton and try again.
If that doesn't work, check Protondb for fixes (the submitted reports include any tweaks if needed).
Honestly though, most games for me just work, or might need GE, and that's it.
Veering slightly off-topic, GTA should be a veritable mess, not so much the game itself, but Rockstar Launcher, so I agree with that assesment of PUBG and Destiny 2. I guess Marvel Rivals should be on the same shelf.
As for everything else, I need to cobble together any old machine to verify everything, but that's me, so I will thank you for the solid advice there. An Ubuntu running Gnome should be my starting point, it seems, some of the things in the article mentions Gnome.
Good job. Thanks.
There’s not too much research to be done these days.
The vast majority of titles purchased on steam will work OOTB.
For non steam purchased games there’s plenty of options too, although none as easy as steam.
That’ll be where research is needed.
However, at a pinch I’ve found adding the installer for a game into steam works.
Quote: 'Another tool is Valve's Proton, which combines WINE and other tools. Proton, though, isn't available on its own: it is part of the Steam client, Valve's subscription service. The only way to use Proton is to install the Steam client and sign in.'
For info, you can also use Proton via Lutris and Bottles.
For Lutris, if you select an installed game, right click and 'Configure', switch to the 'Runner options' tab, and the 'Wine version' drop down lets you select Proton versions, including Steams, but also custom versions such as GE-Proton (if installed under Steam).
I suspect it's reading these from the Steam install, as the GE-Protons are a manual install by myself and only placed under Steam, but Lutris still sees these as well, and only the ones I installed, so you likely still have a dependency there with Steam anyway.
For Bottles, it also supports GE-Proton as a runner (but not regular Proton), and it lists lots of versions. (Bottles > Preferences > Runners : 'Proton GE' is at the bottom). So seems to be independent of Steam.
There is a 4th solution not mentioned above if you have some spare hardware kicking around, or would appreciate an excuse to buy a shiny new box.
I'm mainly an MS .Net developer so my two ties to Windows are Visual Studio and SQL Server, those are what have been keeping me from switching over from Win10 to Debian for years.
The options of using JetBrains Rider / VSCode and Azure Data Studio on Linux just don't cut the mustard for various reasons.
Since I upgraded my desktop a year ago to an i9, I still have my previous i7 box running Win10 with my old working set on it and have been using it as a general backup destination, file dump and test machine.
I plan to get that up to date, swap a bit of the RAM I have on my main box over to it and use it over xRDP just for the two W10 applications I need, plus any others I find I need for whatever reason.
No slug on my main desktop, no emulation problems, shared folders are a breeze and I can still use it as a backup destination for Debian, and backup the Win10 source/DB backups over to Debian (plus the existing rotating set of removable drives for everything).
@Liam: thanks for an interesting article. Please keep them coming.
Having tried all of the methods Liam mentioned, I recommend them in a different order: Virtualisation > dual-booting > WINE/bottles. That's probably because I place one consideration above others - one that Liam doesn't mention - that being process and data separation for reasons of privacy and security.
I have particularly low trust in Windows privacy and similarly for any Windows applications. I know I'm preaching to the converted here, but many vendors in the Windows ecosystem benefit from data harvesting, including Microsoft. If this were ever the case for Linux, I'd probably shoot myself, because that would be the 'end of the world' as far as I'm concerned. Despite some improvements in Windows security, and assuming well-configured machines, the combined criticality of Windows exploits still outstrips those in Linux by a considerable margin, IMHO.
Thus, to run a Windows application in the rare cases where I can't use a Linux equivalent - assuming it's not work, for which I use a dedicated laptop - I prefer Virtualisation in order to guarantee application compatibility and keep Windows neatly coralled where I want it, only permitted to touch hardware or data where I deem it acceptable. Dual-booting means that hardware is still at the mercy of Windows along with any privacy or security exploits for which Windows is a conduit. Plus, there can be issues where Windows decides, for example, to over-write the Linux bootloader or mount your Linux partitions after an update, as recently happened to acquaintances of mine.
Then there's convenience: switching rapidly between Windows and Linux, and easily transferring data (but under my watchful eye), is a boon for the time-poor. As for cost, I don't mind the higher-specced machine - I'd do that anyway and the price differential is pretty small, actually, all things considered, assuming you were aiming for a machine with decent performance in the first place. The hardware demands aren't that bad: I'm currently typing this within a KVM VM on a 15 year-old (Jan 2010), self-built quad-core with a total of 8GB RAM and only modest graphics. I also run several Windows VMs but only one VM at a time. It doesn't require additional patience.
I, too, used to be a Virtualbox user until mid-last year when I switched to qemu/KVM. I find KVM more reliable overall and slightly faster. And the Virtualbox version in some distro repos is out-of-date.
For a user who simply wants to get Linux to work - having come from Windows-only - then I suppose dual-booting would be a good place to start. That's where I started, many years ago.
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