W
Story
WinBoat: Windows apps on Linux with seamless integration
This is just a Windows VM with extra tooling. Makes it look slick, doesn't make it "Windows apps on Linux".

Similar projects exist for gaming for example Looking Glass, which also uses a Windows VM on KVM (the "Windows in Docker" thing is a bit of a lie, Windows doesn't run in the container, Windows runs on KVM on the host kernel).

UX wise, this is similar to RAIL.

That's not to say that this isn't neat, but it's also not something new (we still have two flavours: API simulation/re-implementation and running the OS [windows]). If this was a new, third flavour, that would be quite the news (in-place ABI translation?).

Missed opportunity to call it "Linux Subsystem for Windows", or LSW in short.
  • riedel
  • ·
  • 29 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
If wine was LSW1 than this is LSW2
It's literally just dockur/windows:latest + FreeRDP rootless mode + a small daemon that runs in the VM that tells you what apps are installed via an API.

If you don't want the latter part, you'd be better served with the dockur/windows image + FreeRDP

  • dijit
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP? I haven't actually seen that before so forgive me for asking.

This project looks like it does that, but I could be wrong.

Yes, it's rootless mode. FreeRDP only works with X11, so it runs in Xwayland and the integration isn't as smooth as it could be.

It's reminiscent of rootless mode in Parallels, just as janky, too.

  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 51 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
This is incorrect. FreeRDP has supported Wayland since a long time via their `wlfreerdp` client - which is now deprecated, Wayland support is now available via their `sdl3-freerdp` client. The SDL client was alpha quality a couple of years ago, but as of the last couple of recent releases, it's been pretty decent. I'm unsure though if its reached full feature parity yet with the X11 client.
> can you do "pass a single window" with freeRDP?

That's what "rootless" mode does.

It's definitely neat and the UX is kinda slick... I tried it last weekend. Unfortunately, even basic usage seemed to fail. Launching Edge browser would create a window that was frozen, and no apparent way to recover.. closing left the outline in place, and there were issues with the integration itself. Trying to connect the "Desktop" option seemed to freeze. I was able to connect to the session via the integrated web view, it looked to be asking to allow the rdp connection.

I really didn't dig in any deeper than that... didn't match the use case my SO needed, so wound up having to revert back to Windows on her laptop.

I do hope it gets better... maybe with some more app/system integration on the Windows side of things.

  • ale42
  • ·
  • 15 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
If I understand it correctly, unlike WINE this requries an actual Windows licence (at least if you wish to stay legal)?
Absolutely love seeing these projects that put a friendly face on amazing open source software so people can more easily run Linux and use the software they still need to..

Any similar work underway to get macOS apps running on Linux?

I wish it was possible to see macOS running well on Linux, but there are a lot of loopholes to jump through to make that happen.

1. Apple makes running their software on non-Mac hardware illegal

2. For all the hate Windows gets, virtualizing it to run all over the place is normal and expected by industry at large… the same is only becoming recently true for macOS

3. There is a strong financial interest at Apple to get in the way of this as much as possible

4. Apple is trying to reinvent Docker so people stop using Docker on their Mac’s with their native “Apple Containers” implementation

Due to this… I foresee it taking a while for this to become common for mac apps + Linux

  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 35 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
macOS does in fact runs well on Linux, see: https://github.com/dockur/macos
quickemu makes it pretty easy to launch macOS on kvm. I was able to launch it on my framework chromebook from the Linux terminal
  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 48 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Not quite similar, but there's darling, which only supports CLI apps for now: https://github.com/darlinghq/darling

If you want a full macOS VM there's dockur's project: https://github.com/dockur/macos but no seamless mode support yet.

  • fsh
  • ·
  • 50 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I always used a Virtual Box VM for Office. After giving this a quick try, I'm impressed. The dockered VM is much less bloated then a normal Windows install, and somehow running the apps via a local RDP connection is significantly smoother than the Virtual Box graphics stack.
Looks useful for things that don't work in Wine.
The remote Windows equivalent is kimmknight/remoteapptool which generates an RDP config or MSI, basically open source Vmware Horizon.
my windows paranoia got so high, i misread that as WinBloat

trying it out just now, seems like a great idea !

Is there a way to use this with a remote windows VM that I connect with over RDP?
  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 47 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
You can use WinApps for that instead - supports both local and remote VMs. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
It would be worthwhile to mention Proton IMO. Actually, without GPU pass through (yet, at least) I guess they are not even going after the same use-case anyway. It is just the other obvious comparison after Wine.
  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 45 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
A few folks have managed to get GPU passthrough working https://github.com/dockur/windows/issues/22
Mounting live Discord on your front page. Bold choice.
Ive been on DOS and Windows since the 80's... Recently I was mainly using Windows 10 LTSC, but now I'm finally transitioning to Linux Mint as my daily driver.. It's just so *good* .. The functionality, ease of use, and "just works" aspects of it are better than any other OS imo. It shows what can happen when a small team works with the goal of just making the OS good and giving it as much functionality as possible vs when a giant corp works on it with all sorts of random goals and agendas.

I am a game dev and avid gamer, so that was the only thing keeping me on Windows, but with stuff like Wine, Bottles, Proton, Lutris, + stuff like this coming out that reason is fading away.

Heads up for arm64 users: there’s currently no precompiled arm64 support.
color accurate work? HDR? variable refresh? also it's still windows garbage underneath
The rule of thumb is if you can use Linux and you don't have a very weird niche application that only runs on Windows, then you should migrate to Linux. There are plenty of good entry-level distributions and all sorts of applications too. Sooner or later, Windows will be abandonware with all the BS they will integrate, from always online to AI scanning all your files, so be proactive. I think even macOS is better than Windows in the current day, and you don't need a fortune too. The other day I found a mid-2012 MacBook Pro for $15 at the thrift store, installed 16GiB RAM and an SSD that I both had around, and installed the latest Sequoia with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, and voila, works just like new!
The problem is that some of these niche Windows-only applications rely on drivers that are only available for Windows. In which case, migrating to Linux is challenging at best and impossible at worst.
  • worik
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
> Sooner or later, Windows will be abandonware with all the BS they will integrate, from always online to AI scanning all your files

I really hope this is correct. If there were any justice in the world....

But, oh my aching head, the IT industry seems to be fill of people barely holding on, hoping and preying nobody calls their bluff.

To these people, who hold a death grip on middle management, "nobody gets fired for buying microsoft" is a real thing

Quality be dammed, job security rules the roost

> [Flatpak, Podman?]: This is on our to-do list, but it'll take some effort because Flatpak is pretty isolated from the rest of the system and apps, so we'd have to find a way to expose installed apps, the Docker binary, and the Docker socket, and many other utilities

Vinegar wraps WINE in a Flatpak.

The vscode flatpak works with podman-remote packaged at a flatpak too; or you can call `host-spawn` or `flatpak-spawn` like there's no container/flatpak boundary there.

Nested rootless containers do work somehow; presumably with nested /etc/subuids for each container?

Distrobox passes a number of flags necessary to run GUI apps in rootless containers with Podman. Unfortunately the $XAUTHORITY path varies with each login on modern systemd distros.

Is this a wrapper on Wine? Or a full VM?
  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 36 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
It's a full VM running via Docker. The Windows apps are presented via RDP's RemoteApps protocol via FreeRDP.

There's also WinApps, which is the same thing but without the docker container, and it supports a remote VM as well: https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

> So, am I able to run Office 365 on it?

> Yes. :)

I mean, great. I've never actually tried since going all in on Linux. Figured I'd just abandon the Windows world. This would be useful though.

Does anyone here actually do this, with Winboat or any other tool? Every time I've tried it's been too flaky to be worthwhile, but it's been a good few years.

I'd chuffing love to have Affinity back.

It's just a VM + an RDP connection in rootless mode. You can do it, but RDP is flaky in rootless mode.

I'm currently using a similar setup for Office. You lose drag and drop, and you will be restarting the RDP client over and over again.

It's a "solution" if you're willing to put up with jank.

Out of interest why do you need to?

I've always been fine with libre office/Google docs since moving to Linux, but I'm not a heavy office user.

Thanks, I see stuff like this and think, "well if it worked well everyone would use it all the time".

Affinity is something I use occasionally enough to be able to put up with a bit of jank.

Appreciate the response, good to know what I'm getting into before diving into something.

  • d3Xt3r
  • ·
  • 38 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Affinity actually works fine in Wine (last I checked), takes a bit of effort to set it up though: https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux