Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows

Run real Windows in an automatically managed virtual machine, and mix Windows apps in their own windows on your Linux desktop. WinApps and WinBoat both deliver the same functionality: they run real Windows in a VM and export native Windows apps in individual windows onto your Linux desktops, integrated with your native Linux …

[gnwiii]

Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

The article mentions the need for a large root partition. For distros that put root and home in btrfs subvolumes, the underlying mass storage capacity is shared, so as long as your storage device is big enough, you don't need to be concerned with size of the root partition when you installed linux, and can even add an additional device to increase the space available to your btrfs filesystem. I find various projects/tools need lots of space in a user’s home directory, /var, or /opt, so btrfs subvolumes let you get on with your work without reconfiguring storage with gnuparted, etc.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

Assuming you're willing to trust your data to btrfs's tender mercies.

It was unreliable, with data-loss horror stories, for so long that avoiding it became automatic reflex for me. Is it actually up to production use these days?

And on a related note, how is ZFS on Linux? I've only used it on FreeBSD, where it rocks.

[demon driver]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

Since I moved to Linux Mint a few years ago I've been using btrfs (that's presented as a boot FS option during install) without any hiccups except once, which wasn't nice but not as spectacularly bad that I'd still remember the details. It allows you to use Timeshift with system partition snapshots which can be really helpful. And subvolumes are a nice way to separate things...

I do remember that there used to be major issues with running VMs with big virtual drives on it due to its copy-on-write nature, but that seems to have been fixed.

Regarding ZFS, I'm using it on some (Debian based) Proxmox servers (PVE and PBS). A whole new world of possibilities. Proxmox comes with a custom kernel, though, that includes ZFS...

[UCAP]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

I've used BTRFS on Opensuse Tumbleweed for 5 years or so with not file system corruption events at any time.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

> I've used BTRFS on Opensuse Tumbleweed for 5 years or so with not file system corruption events at any time.

Good for you. I used openSUSE as my daily driver at work for 4 years, Mon-Fri 8-9h a day, and at least 1 of my machines self-destructed at least twice a year and sometimes more often.

I will never trust Btrfs again and recommend against it in any and all roles.

The killer problems:

* Full volumes _WILL_ corrupt when written to, every time

* It is impossible to tell when a volume is nearly full because the `df` command is an _estimate_ and there is no API or other way to get real accurate values for free disk space, unlike any other filesystem I've encountered in over 40 years across as many different OSes.

* As a result, using the single killer feature of the FS, COW snapshots, constantly risks filling a nearly-full filesystem and neither the user not software can check; it is not possible to know

* The `repair` tool does not work, usually destroys volumes, and the Btrfs project docs warn against using it.

Any one of these 4 would be a no verdict from me. Any 2 means "no way ever". But all 4 mean it is not suitable for production use, even for a home computer.

Free space and repair are documented known issues with no known fix and no plausible way to even think about fixing them.

Btrfs is not complete, not ready for 1.0 yet, and is not fit for purpose.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

Sorry, Liam... the article is GREAT but your Btrfs experience is well out of date.

Sure, it had early problems but now it really is fine and well-behaved. And subvolumes, snapshots and built-in RAID options are really powerful features, especially when combined with LVM to easily control how I move my data between my physical disks.

Due to the early problems, I subscribed to the developers mailing list years ago. I am still on it and there are very, very few problems reported nowadays.

[JoeCool]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

Are you stating that those 4 showstopper issues have been resolved ?

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

In my experience, yes. But I can only point to my own experience.

In my experience the filesystem full problems have gone away. If I get a filesystem full I either temporarily add another disk, sort it out, and then remove the temporary disk (which causes BTRFS to move all the data off that temporary disk to elsewhere in the filesystem) or, even easier, just extend the underlying LVM logical volume and resize the disk.

btrfs filesystem df and btrfs filesystem usage provide all the information I need to understand how full the disks are. I keep an eye on these to avoid filesystems getting full: I extend the underlying LV volumes as required - typically every few months.

By the way, all this is one reason I use LVM - it is easy for me to create a small temporary volume for rearranging my (big) BTRFS filesystems.

I don't really understand Liam's issue about snapshots. I use snapshots very heavily (both manually and using btrbk for backups on disk and on other disks). Of course keeping snapshots around will use up disk space but, as I said, it is easily monitored using btrfs fi df and btrfs fi usage. The one thing that is almost impossible with btrfs is to know how much disk space will be freed up by deleting something (because files may still be taking up space if they still exist in other subvolumes, such as snapshots). That is best handled by some discipline in the way you create subvolumes and, particularly, snapshots.

I haven't tried to repair any disks so I can't comment on that. However, note that I have been using btrfs since quite early days - even when it was still quite buggy - and have not needed repair.

I do recommend, if you can spare some disk space, running btrfs over LVM so it is easy to change "disk" sizes and create and remove btrfs devices.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Linux with btrfs subvolumes for root and home

Thanks for weighing in, Liam. Very much appreciated.

[QET]

Re: ZFS

As long as you're not the type who likes to stay on the cutting edge of kernel versions, or update to the latest LTS sub-version right away, it's virtually painless.

The snag is that sometimes, things are updated in the kernel which breaks how ZFS "integrates" with the kernel via DKMS. So you'd have to wait for the ZFS specific files for Linux to be updated to compensate for that.

Granted it's been some years since I experienced that myself, but it pays to be cautious with kernel updates with ZFS.

[xyz]

near-native performance,

You mean it's going to run that slowly?

[[e-mail]]

Oh great!

I can run the Windows version of Teams on Ubuntu! This is exactly what I want!

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Oh great!

I was really hoping I could finally run Copilot. This is very much only thing missing in Ubuntu.

[druck]

Re: Oh great!

How on earth did you manage to type that with a straight face?

[VicMortimer]

Yuck

The whole point of Wine is to not have to run the nightmare that is Windoze.

These are a step backwards.

[Steve Foster]

Re: Yuck

For anyone with hardware [and/or software] that can only be driven under Windows, what else do you suggest?

(note that replacing very expensive or niche h/w or s/w with something else [that doesn't require Windows] might not be practicable, or even available)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Yuck

Also applications for strongly regulated environments only certified to run under Windows.

An all these categories there's also the possibility thet they only run in obsolete versions of Windows.

[Mostly Irrelevant]

Re: Yuck

If you have hardware that only supports Windows, you don't really have much option. I should point out here that you do have the option to not buy hardware that only supports Windows.

[frankvw]

Re: Yuck

"The whole point of Wine is to not have to run the nightmare that is Windoze."

While WINE is impressive, it only offers the Windows API on Linux. It does NOT offer a full-blown Windows environment to Windows applications, because WINE Is Not an Emulator. Applications that need more Windows-ness than just the API won't work with it. The latest heavyweight Adobe and Microsoft applications are good examples of this.

But don't just take it from me; try it yourself. Start with some thing simple: download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat and try to get it to work on Linux with WINE without crashing every other time you click your mouse. Let me know when you've got that sorted and we'll talk further.

^{(Spoiler: you won't. Recent versions of Adobe and MS applications expect WIndows job objects, Windows-style sandboxing / process isolation, GPU process spawning, ACL security on named pipes and what not. WINE doesn't (and, by its very nature, can't) support most of that. So if you need that (or anything that comes with proprietary drivers) to make a living, WINE simply won't cut it.)}

[cd]

Is there something like this for OS X so I can run my Mavericks partitions likewise?

[Liam Proven]

> Is there something like this for OS X so I can run my Mavericks partitions likewise?

You cannot easily virtualise one bare-metal OS under another on x86.

Saying that, VMware is as close as it gets; its seamless-integration feature comes close to this for Windows on x86 macOS.

MacOS on macOS, or macOS on Linux? I don't think so, no.

[Doctor Syntax]

" the WinApps config for both Docker and Podman defaults to storing the Windows VM in /var/lib"

If only Linux had a standard place for storing data for such services. It could be called something like /srv

[VoiceOfTruth]

If only Linux had something like hier (7) on FreeBSD

FreeBSD is *much* better and tidier in this respect.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: If only Linux had something like hier (7) on FreeBSD

WHoosh?

Try man hier(7) (Linux version)

[An_Old_Dog]

Definition of "Integration"

For me, Linux/Windows integration means being able ro pipe the text output of a Linux program into the input of a Windows program, and vice-versa.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Definition of "Integration"

> being able ro pipe the text output of a Linux program into the input of a Windows program

WSL1 is about as close as it ever got, and that is discontinued.

[Bill Gray]

Put Windows in jail?

This is well outside my area of expertise, and of almost entirely academic interest only (at least to me). I have minimal needs for Windows.

But I'm wondering if running Windows in this manner would allow one to restrict Microsoft's baser impulses? Could your machine tell Windows "hmmm, sorry, it appears updates are unavailable"? Or "we'd love to pass that telemetry back to Redmond, but the server isn't responding"?

More of a stretch : lie to the OS and say "oh, yes, this machine does satisfy the requirements for Win11".

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

Liam mentions a fake virtual TPM in TFA.

To go one step further, I wonder if it would be possible to strip the Windows down to kernel, drivers and a minimal set of .DLLs so that it's just an API for running Windows applications.

[Bill Gray]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

Liam mentions a fake virtual TPM in TFA.

Sorry, I had a reading comprehension failure there. Seems to me being able to run Win11 on old hardware would be a Big Deal for some.

[QET]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

I've seen that done with windows 98 for some OBD tester software for Fiat's.

The official program were literally a streamlined VM & win98 install with USB and COM port passthrough for the tester dongles supported.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

> I've seen that done with windows 98

Locus DOS Merge did this in the _1980s_.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(software)

It evolved into Netraverse and Win4Lin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win4Lin

DOS was not a protected-mode OS which made this possible for true protect-mode OSes from SCO Xenix onwards. This went for OSes that loaded from and ran on top of DOS too.

The method died when Win9x died, and by the 21st century it was over.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

> Could your machine tell Windows "hmmm, sorry, it appears updates are unavailable"?

Bad plan. I see this request a lot. You do not want this. Install all available updates ASAP, all the time every time, to try to keep the swiss-cheese string net bag of Windows as secure as it can be.

> Or "we'd love to pass that telemetry back to Redmond, but the server isn't responding"?

If you care that much, don't run the OS, don't run the apps.

Or be realistic. Run this:

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

And live with it.

> "oh, yes, this machine does satisfy the requirements for Win11".

This has been possible since Win11 was in beta and I specifically talk about how to do it in the article.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

I suppose there's a trad-off, at least in perceived risks, between the PC being clobbered by a malicious attack and a Microsoft update. That might depend on how it's used but keeping it entirely off the net eliminates both risks.

[Alumoi]

Re: Put Windows in jail?

Install all available updates ASAP, all the time every time, to try to keep the swiss-cheese string net bag of Windows as secure as it can be

And when every other update crashes the system, don't come and tell me. Blame Microsoft.

Every freaking Windows update should be postponed for at least 30 days until the patch that patches the patched update is declared somewhat working by the enraged users.

[C R Mudgeon]

Minor historical nit:

"Since late 1994, the desktop version of VMWare is free to use [...]"

That date has to be wrong. VMware, the company, was only founded in 1998, and VMware, its first product, was initially released in 1999.

That product was later renamed VMware Workstation when the company started producing server products as well.

A stripped-down free-as-in-beer version called VMware Player (later VMware Workstation Player) came out in 2005.

(Those dates are from Wikipedia, but the ones in the 90s jibe with my memory. I bought a copy of VMware in the spring of 1999 for personal use as soon as it became available. I'm no longer a VMware fanboi -- been a mostly happy VirtualBox user for eons now -- but as must be obvious, I was one once.)

[David 132]

Yes, that gave me a double-take as well. I don't think "consumer desktop virtualization on an x86 PC" was even a thing in '94, although I'm sure someone'll chime in to prove me wrong :)

The article that the quoted text links to says 2024, so I'll assume it's a typo or brain-fart on the part of the author.

[werdsmith]

I remember the thing about having to enable VT-X or AMD-V in the bios settings first appearing about 2005.

[Liam Proven]

> "Since late 1994, the desktop version of VMWare is free to use [...]"

Sorry about that -- my bad. Brainfart. It should be 2024.

I have notified the editors and it will be fixed but maybe not til Monday now.

(Note to self: it's Sunday. Stop commenting on your own damned stuff.)

I have read many people who don't know it's now freeware. Those running big deployments know the reason: the server versions are now much more expensive.

[David 132]

It’s been fixed.

Future visitors to this page will have no idea what we’re all on about.

[FIA]

RDP was Microsoft's answer to X11,

RDP was Citrix's answer to X11 (although unlike X11 at the time it's fairly usable over a network). They later licensed the tech back to MS, which became Terminal Services.

[Liam Proven]

> RDP was Citrix's answer to X11

Fair point, yes.

I wanted to keep it short and simple -- the article was already overlong -- but you're right and your point is valid. Credit where it's due.

[Adrian Harvey]

> RDP was Citrix's answer to X11

ICA was Citrix's answer to X11. MS took back the code to MultiWin (IIRC internal name within Citrix) which was the code to extend Win NT to be actually multiuser. MS did not get ICA as part of the deal - MS wrote their own protocol (RDP) and Citrix continued to sell ICA, its various clients and a management layer as Metaframe (followed by a hundred more name changes)

Citrix sublicenced their WinFrame product too, you could buy WinCenter which added X11 as a remote protocol (and WinDD which did the same and NTrigue which had that and also a Mac client)

[Bran Muffin]

Thanks but no thanks

I'm perfectly happy running my software on a native Windows install. No muss, no fuss.

[ecofeco]

Re: Thanks but no thanks

This.

There is no longer anything I need from Windows on Linux. The problem is, I still need Windows for work. Fixing Windows crap is what I do for money.

Thank god I have separate PCs at home.

[TVU]

Re: Thanks but no thanks

Thankfully, I have been able to find native Linux alternatives to Windows software for all my needs, eg Softmaker Office for MS Office, Nomacs for Irfanview, etc.

[demon driver]

GPU passthrough

With my dual-GPU laptop I'm still looking for a comprehensible, usable way to run Windows in a VM in a way that it reserves the 'good' GPU just when it runs, or, even better, when I want it to run it with proper GPU support. It's more or less the only thing that still makes me run Windows natively...

[LaoTsu]

Re: GPU passthrough

https://asus-linux.org/guides/vfio-guide/

Supergfxctl isn't Asus only, but is being rewritten in a newer form. It does work though, so have a go. I've been using this for years on my Asus laptop, and it's great for when I need Windows.

[demon driver]

Re: GPU passthrough

Thanks, I'll have a look at it!

[druck]

WinBloat

Sorry, I saw WinBoat, but I read WinBloat

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Re: WinBloat

Freudian slip of the eye

[lnLog]

hiding virtual machine

Do either of these provide a means to hide the fact that windows is running in a VM from the software inside it? Some of the commercial CAD stuff wont run if it detects it is in a VM.

Been struggling with find a viable method for this along with forwarding a pci ethernet card for the MAC addresses linked to licenses. 10 LTSC is ok currently stand alone, but new software versions will refuse to instal on it soon enough, and win 11 needs to be contained in a flaming moat. Been trying to do this every 5 years or so for the last 15, bit closer every time but still no complete solution available

[elsergiovolador]

Re: hiding virtual machine

These CAD companies probably don't realise how evil they are. They are not only subjecting their customers to whining slow Windows laptops, but also anyone who is not using CAD and tries to silently enjoy their Mac, but has to sit next to them.

[werdsmith]

Re: hiding virtual machine

"tries to silently enjoy their Mac"

That's funny.

How do you know if someone is a Mac user? Wait a maximum of 2 minutes and they'll tell you.

[David 132]

Re: hiding virtual machine

“…forwarding a pci ethernet card for the MAC addresses linked to licenses”

Most hypervisors allow the mac address of the virtual Ethernet adapters to be manually specified/overridden, or am I misunderstanding something?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

"but there are limits to its compatibility: for instance, there's no Microsoft Store."

That sounds like a positive to me....

[Liam Proven]

> That sounds like a positive to me....

Well, I know, and personally I agree, but it was one of the questions asked of a previous story of mine on WINE and it's a valid request. This is a thing some people want. There are apps on there available no other way.

This is why I showed OneNote. I don't like it, but I have had to use it for work years ago. So I do have an account and I've tested it on macOS which is why the screenshot shows a message about OneNote for Mac.

OneNote 2016 is the last version that does not need the MS Store and can run locally. It will not install on WINE, although on WINE 11 it tries for a long time and I think gets further than ever -- but it fails.

It works fine on W10 LTSC in VirtualBox, but the app screen display has corruption. VBox seamless video does not correctly display some transparency effects and OneNote is unusable.

That is why I used OneNote: WinApps can do this, although to install the app you must log directly into the VM and install it by hand. But once done, it works.

For this article, I only span up new clean empty W10 LTSC VMs. W10 LTSC does not have the Store.

But for another piece I am researching, and for my own use, I wanted to try a cycling app called MyWhoosh:

https://mywhoosh.com/getting-started-mywhoosh-cycling-app/

It is _only_ available on the MS Store.

So, I installed the MS Store on W10 LTSC (on bare metal, on a Thinkpad X220). It works fine, no problems.

(As it happened WyWhoosh then refused to install -- not a good enough GPU.)

So this method will work with W10 LTSC and you can then install the MS Store and then install apps from that.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Yeah I get all that Liam Weaning yourself off Windows apps is a whole thing in itself. I haven't touched it in over a decade now and it's been bliss.

[frankvw]

Share and enjoy

While Liam has already pointed this out to some degree, let me emphasize: The performance penalty of running Windows as a guest in a VM on a Linux host is atrocious.

But... if you can use "the wizardry of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol" to integrate an OS in a VM into your host UI, why would you want to run that guest OS on the same machine? Run Windows on another box, share your file systems using SMB mounts (both ways) and use RDP, or whatever other protocol will tickle your pickle, to integrate the lot without taking a huge performance knock and facing a humongous resource requirement. It's also much simpler to set up.

Downsides? Yes, there are some. The biggest one that I can see is that copy-and-paste of objects (e.g. images) from one OS to another won't work that way, whereas a VM will offer at least some support for it. That can be a pain, depending on how much you need it. (Although it hasn't always worked for me; it appears to depend on the application. This can be an issue both with a VM and with WINE.)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Share and enjoy

> The performance penalty of running Windows as a guest in a VM on a Linux host is atrocious.

I recommend a close study of the docs and the WinApps `libvirt` setup.

It uses virtio device drivers heavily, custom CPU scheduling, custom host/guest integration, and more.

Windows "knows" it is in a VM, but the VM is configured to lie to it and tells the guest it is running under Hyper-V. The guest is using drivers that talk directly to the hypervisor so there is much less emulation overheard: it's using a virtio network and a virtio display and virtio input. This is also connected with how the host can grow and shrink the VM's memory.

I did no performance testing. I generally do not. I have *implemented* benchmarks and I know that the info is not as useful as people think, and that the people who believe in them passionately do not know statistics and don't know how to read the numbers. (I have a biology degree; I had to learn basic stats, and it was very hard: it is not trivial.)

But what I have done is tested VirtualBox vs VMware when VMware Fusion became freeware. The difference is remarkable. Windows is dramatically visibly quicker in VMware than in the FOSS hypervisor, and so are apps, and the integration is much better. (Windows apps can use Mac apps to send email, and macOS can open websites in Windows browsers, and things like that.)

WinApps does considerable optimisation of the guest OS. I didn't have time to look at whether WinBoat does the same -- this story took as long as 4 normal stories to research as it is.

I think you might be surprised at what you find.

[Ian Johnston]

I cannot imagine a better way to avoid Windows than to run a copy of Windows in a particularly convoluted way. That'll show The Man.

[Liam Proven]

> I cannot imagine a better way to avoid Windows than to run a copy of Windows in a particularly convoluted way.

TBH, I have no use for this myself and will probably be uninstalling both apps from both test machines.

But I do regularly hear from people who are happy to use Linux but who can't do their jobs without some app that won't run on Linux including through WINE. This is a very F FAQ, and a very common problem.

This was does offer better integration than running a standalone VM.

[Blackjack]

Modern Windows is such a pain people keeps looking for alternatives.

[Kurgan]

Wayland

RDP was Microsoft's answer to X11, before the great minds of the Wayland project came along to tell us that we don't need such things.

This is how Linux is becoming worse every day. But everyone seems to be so happy to use Wayland and Systemd and all the modern crap that is killing Linux.

[TVU]

Re: Wayland

While I can't do anything about Systemd given that it is so contageously widespread, I am staying with Xorg as I find it still works better and more consistently than Wayland when it comes to my applications and screens management.

[Kurgan]

Re: Wayland

I'm staying with X11 until it will disappear, like the old sysV init has disappeared.

[gosand]

Re: Wayland

Several distros support it. I've been on Devuan since 2018 running sysvinit.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Wayland

"While I can't do anything about Systemd given that it is so contageously widespread"

Yes you can : https://www.devuan.org/

(Other options are also available.

[kmorwath]

Re: Wayland

Of course, Linux is like wine, the older the better - all those stuff invented after 1975 must be removed!!! It's just like a "sacred bok" of any religion, it cannot be improved, it was "created perfect".

Really, IT risks to be locked in into an outdated OS because its worshipers can't look beyond their nose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wayland

X11 vs Wayland seems to be, largely, a great many people saying "We need to be able to do <x> with our GUI environment", and Wayland's developers saying back "Why the FUCK do you need to that useless shit?!?!".

This is not "progress".

[gosand]

Re: Wayland

Your comment makes no sense since Linux didn't exist until 1991.

But just to be clear, your comment makes no sense even if you would have gotten that date right.

[lordminty]

Resources

This seems to use lots of resources.

I haven't seen much mentioned about Pi Apps or BotSpot Virtual Machine (BVM) anywhere, as a Linux solution to run Windows apps and Windows.

BVM allows you to run a stripped down Windows VM. I've got it on a couple of Raspberry Pis, an 8GB Pi 4 which boots from SSD over USB and a Pi 400. The Pi 400 has only 4GB RAM and runs off an SD card.

Yes its not the fastest Windows 11 VM by any means, but it works.

For anyone interested, install Pi Apps and the select BVM in there. Pi Apps even has Pi versions of Teams and Zoom.

[TonyJ]

I've tried both

And they work well.

However they both also suffer from the same issues (worth noting this was last tested a few months ago): You don't get unique icons for the Windows VM applications, you get the one last opened - so, for example, if you open Word then Outlook, the Word icon goes and is replaced with Outlook and you can then choose which to go to from that one icon.

Things often hang or crash for no apparent reason.

Closing all applications quite often doesn't shut them down on the VM and this can lead to needing a reboot.

I think I had a few other issues here and there but I can't recall them all now.

It's also worth noting that I've run it in various different distros and on different physical hardware and still experienced the issues.

Personally, I've found OnlyOffice a much easier solution. It seems to have truly excellent compatibility (much more so than LibreOffice) with Office files, has a clean and modern interface and just works well. I still have doubts around it's alleged Russian contacts, but so far it doesn't seem to have tried to to anything nefarious. Obviously, YMMV.

[kmorwath]

Adobe applications may be the wrong target...

... good luck implementing color management properly in such a stack. For casual use it may not be an issue, otherwise it is. Moreover most Adobe applications today need access to the GPU for most tasks, not only those AI-related. Virtual ones may not be enough - you'd need full passthrough.

[PreformedCondiment]

Wayland

Worked perfectly until Linux distros began moving to Wayland away from X11. Until Wayland supports RAILs, Winapps no go. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps/issues/779. I saw your headline and hoped this had been solved, or a new tool worked around it, but sadly looks like it's El Reg discovering the tool that used to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also Steam/Proton

Which is pretty effective as well.

Although Steam is not sold for running anything but games the Windows emulator part (Proton) does a better job in many areas than Wine itself does. And in some cases, it does a better job than Windows does. It's also far less overhead than the VM bases solutions as well as only needing a license for any commercial software you may be running.

In particular, Proton's graphics support is very good.

I will concede, "some configuration required" but getting past that is generally just a matter of how high the annoyance level with Windows itself was.

[TonyJ]

Re: There's also Steam/Proton

Tried it but could never get Office to install.