Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box
- Reference: 1748428090
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/28/three_ways_to_win_on_lin/
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Windows 10 is staring down the barrel of Microsoft's gun. The [1]"End of 10" is nigh . But when Windows 10 reaches its end of its life on October 14th, there are a wealth of free options available that will run on anything going. (As the meme puts it, Windows 11 has a list of specifications it requires, but the list for Linux is "electricity.") The snag is that many Windows users will have some app which they just can't live without. You are not alone. You might be able to take it with you.
There are two main routes open: run a copy of real Windows in a VM, or run a tool that lets Windows programs run under Linux. Both lead to further choices: if you use a VM, what VM? And if you use a runtime, which one?
[2]
Word 97, with all its fripperies and frills turned off, running seamlessly on WINE 10 – click to enlarge
Virtualize that (resource) sucker
First, the VM route. This vulture does occasionally use this route, and we use [3]VirtualBox , because it's FOSS and it is included in most mainstream distros. The main VirtualBox hypervisor is totally free, and it comes with "Guest Additions" that run on the OSes inside VMs. Those are free as well. There is only one bit that is licensed: the VirtualBox Extension Pack , which is in the box at the [4]top right of Oracle's Downloads page . That can cost money if used in production, but avoid that part and you're in the clear.
Another option is VMware – that's [5]been free since late 2024 . It's not open source, and we suspect that even Broadcom doesn't know whether it will stay free, but if you're more familiar with it, it is a possibility.
[6]
Either way, grab a Windows ISO – both 10 and 11 are [7]free downloads from Microsoft – install it in a fresh VM and off you go. We suggest trying the [8]LTSC IoT version , as it will still get updates for years to come.
[9]
[10]
VirtualBox will identify Windows from the ISO file and suggest 2GB of RAM and a single core. We recommend 8GB of RAM and two processor cores. We also recommend installing the guest additions for your preferred hypervisor, as that gets you handy things like accelerated graphics, cut-and-paste between host and guest, and the ability to share a folder on the host machine with the guest, which is the easiest way to get things in and out of your VM. For VirtualBox in particular, it's also worth enabling 3D acceleration in the VM's display settings.
[11]
If Word 97 is too old, or too limiting, then the last version without the Ribbon works fine too – click to enlarge
We tested both VirtualBox and VMware Workstation. We found that VMware does make the process a little easier and Windows seems to perform rather more snappily. Other desktop hypervisors are also available, of course: if you use GNOME, then there's [12]GNOME Boxes , for instance.
This is where a key drawback of the VM route rises into view: with a VM, you need to dedicate enough of your resources to the VM to run that OS reasonably well – as well as whatever your host OS needs. So a modern Linux really will want at least 8 GB of RAM to itself, and if Windows wants 8 GB as well, that means 16 GB in total. The same goes for disk space, but CPU cores, perhaps oddly, are less critical. If you will run a VM all the time, you will need a well-specified host PC – or great patience.
There are some caveats. If your app is something that directly accesses the hardware, then a VM may not work well enough. At best, if it's something that talks to an external device over USB, like say [13]iTunes for Windows or its modern replacements with an Apple tablet – then you'll have some fiddly extra work to do. For instance, you might have to disconnect the device from the host OS, and connect its port directly to the VM.
[14]
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 and which you can easily extract with [15]Nirsoft's Produkey , a VM can't see the real machine's real firmware: it only gets the emulated firmware of the VM. You can try extracting the key and feeding it to the VM, but this is unlikely to work. You'll either have to buy another copy, or enter the murky world of third-party activators. [16]Ahaa, Jim lad! .
If the apps you need are not hampered by these limitations, then this approach works well and offers the best compatibility. The price, though, is poor integration. Effectively, your Windows apps are running inside an emulator, and you can't easily open files on the host machine or vice versa .
The desktop version of VMware has some additional tweaks to try to improve integration, but it's not great. There is a FOSS project called [17]WinApps which conceals a Windows VM running on the Linux kernel's built-in hypervisor, and exports individual apps over [18]Microsoft's RDP . The aim is to improve integration. We're working on a standalone article on this.
Dual boot, or, duel of the OSes
A big drawback of the VM approach is that a virtual machine is, well, virtual . It's a fancy hardware-assisted software emulator. Your VM can't directly use your host graphics card: it drives an emulated, virtual one. VMs are not a good route for high performance, and this is not a great way to run games. If you want Windows games, then we suggest you dual-boot. We [19]described how to do that in part 2 of [20]The Register Guide to Linux , although it was long enough ago we described how to share a PC with Windows 7. (Which [21]you still can do if you so desire, of course.) More recently, we [22]shared some tips on how to clean up Windows before dual-booting.
Turn to WINE instead
Which leads us to the other option: WINE. As we said [23]back when WINE 7.0 appeared , it took 18 years for WINE to get to version 1.0 and then another nine years to get to version 2.0 – but ever since WINE 3 in 2018, there's been a new major version roughly once a year. We have covered [24]WINE 8 , [25]WINE 9 and [26]WINE 10 .
The name of WINE sounds self-contradictory: it stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator . It isn't: it's a translation layer. WINE attempts to intercept the calls that a Windows program makes to the Windows OS and translate them to the closest equivalent Linux calls. This is a complicated and risky undertaking, which is partly why, after over 30 years, it's now at the point where quite a few popular programs work to a useful degree.
[27]
WINE is also not a magic potion. It does work for some programs on some setups, but it also fails quite often. There are many Windows programs and tools that will probably never work, or not work well enough to use. There are many variables and factors involved, and as an example, on the Reg FOSS desk's actual, er, desk, we have a laptop with Ubuntu 22.04 which can happily run both Word 97 and Word 2003 under WINE, and another with Ubuntu 24.04 which won't install either version. It's complicated.
As even in the FOSS world, this means that there are multiple options to explore.
Use the stock version
Most distros include WINE in their repositories. You can just run sudo apt install wine or your distro's equivalent, wait a short time, then reboot (for good measure — it's not essential) and try it. If you have Flatpak support, [28]it's also on Flathub .
With WINE installed, Linux can run Windows binaries. So, for instance, you could grab an [29]ISO file of Office 97 from the Internet Archive, mount it, change to Linux's folder for that volume, and just run wine setup.exe . In theory, anyway. WINE is much more capable than it once was, and a lot of applications will work with it, but there are limitations. Programs intended to extend the functionality of the Windows OS, such as cloud drive clients (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and so on) typically won't work. Nor will things like antivirus programs, not that you need them. There's no Windows Store, so there's no way to install or run apps distributed that way.
[30]
Windows 10 and the free OneNote client, inside the free VMware Workstation, on Ubuntu - click to enlarge
If this nuts-and-bolts approach seems a little too techie, there are several alternative methods that aim to make this easier.
Try a bottle instead
[31]Bottles is a wrapper around WINE which simplifies installing Windows apps as well as keeping them isolated from one another. It offers separate types of bottle for productivity apps and for gaming, as well as a custom type with more knobs to twiddle. Bottles is a native GNOME app: it looks a little out of place on other desktops, and at least at present, it's only available [32]on Flathub .
One of the strengths of Bottles is that it also includes extra tools for getting games working, which add in additional layers of FOSS tools to provide extended support for 3D acceleration and so on.
We mention Bottles because it is an option, especially if you find the command-line approach of raw unassisted WINE to be daunting. However, in our testing, we haven't found it to be a significant improvement: if plain unassisted WINE won't run your program, then we haven't found a single instance where Bottles can.
Try a fresher vintage
If the version of WINE included in your distro can't run the app you need, it's quite easy to get a newer version direct from the developers. The [33]WineHQ downloads page has ready-made packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and macOS, along with instructions on how to install them. It also has instructions for openSUSE, Slackware, and FreeBSD.
A few years ago, this was definitely worth a try, but as we have written before, WINE has matured substantially in recent releases. If you use a distribution with a slow-moving release cycle, such as Debian or Ubuntu LTS releases, it's worth a try, but it's less useful than it was even six or seven years ago.
[34]LastOS slaps neon paint on Linux Mint and dares you to run Photoshop
[35]Linux in Excel? Sure, why not ruin both
[36]Zorin OS 17.3 takes the Brave step of changing its default browser from Firefox
[37]Linus Torvalds forgot to release Linux 6.14 for a whole day
If you can afford it, buy the good stuff
Along with the simple command-line driven FOSS edition of WINE, there's also a paid-for premium product: [38]Codeweavers Crossover . There are versions for the Debian/Ubuntu family and the Fedora/Red Hat family, as well as a binary version that will run on most other distros. And there are versions for macOS, and for ChromeOS if you have a high-end ChromeBook.
The Register has been covering Codeweavers CrossOver since [39]version 1.0 more than 23 years ago , including [40]reviewing it on Mac OS X , the [41]release of CrossOver 10 , the [42]Android version , and more recently, when it added [43]support for Apple Silicon Macs .
There's a free evaluation version. This vulture is not too proud to admit that he used the evaluation version to finish an important freelance project, just under a decade ago. CrossOver does what it says on the tin, and it's much less hassle than raw-dogging WINE itself. Of course, the snag is that paying for software is too much for many FOSS fundies to swallow – but if you need a Windows app that badly, this may be worth it. For instance, its [44]compatibility database gives a five-star rating to [45]Adobe Photoshop CS 6 and says "Runs great".
Never mind the techie stuff, I just want to play
If you're not interested in boring businessy type stuff but want Windows games, then there are several tools which aim to get you gaming on Linux.
One of the first was [46]PlayOnLinux , but the project seems dormant now. The current version 4.4 came out in 2020, some time after version 5 reached alpha test in 2019 — and then stalled. There hasn't been a new release in over five years.
A newer replacement is [47]Lutris , which is included in many distros and can be added to most others. It supports WINE but also multiple other emulators and similar tools to get things running with the minimum of hassle.
Another tool is [48]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. There is a [49]Steam repository with packages for the latest Ubuntu LTS release, but the recommended route is to use your distribution's package app store. The Steam client is in [50]Canonical's Snap store and [51]also in Flathub .
Summary
There are three primary options available to run Windows apps on a Linux computer.
If you only need them occasionally and don't need to do anything else at the same time, keep both Windows and Linux installed on your machine and dual boot. This offers 100 per cent perfect compatibility, 100 per cent performance, full hardware access and no hindrances at all. It's also very doable on Intel-based Macs.
For the best integration and performance, try running the app under WINE – either one of the free editions, or if that doesn't work and you want to avoid hassle, buy CodeWeavers CrossOver. If you just need a few paid apps, then check to see if they have good ratings in CodeWeaver's compatibility database. If so, this is the least-hassle option – and with either free WINE or paid CrossOver, you save the cost of a Windows license.
If you have a fairly high-end computer, and the apps you need both won't run on WINE but also don't need fancy 3D hardware or anything, then run Windows in a VM and run the apps in that. You may need to buy an additional Windows license, though. Now that VMware is effectively freeware, this might be a more appealing option.
You do have plenty of options. And the best news of all is that none of these exclude any of the others. You can have WINE installed for one app, and dual-boot for some intensive games, and run Windows in a VM for some less-demanding ones, all at the same time. ®
Get our [52]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/15/end_of_10_campaign/
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/05/27/word-97-wine-10.png
[3] https://www.virtualbox.org/
[4] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/14/vmware_workstation_free/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aDczFl6-MsYpXT5Ifr2O8AAAAYI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10iso
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/windows_10_ltsc/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aDczFl6-MsYpXT5Ifr2O8AAAAYI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aDczFl6-MsYpXT5Ifr2O8AAAAYI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/05/27/word-2003-wine.jpg
[12] https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Boxes/
[13] https://support.apple.com/en-us/118290
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aDczFl6-MsYpXT5Ifr2O8AAAAYI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html
[16] https://talklikeapirate.com/
[17] https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
[18] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/remote/understanding-remote-desktop-protocol
[19] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2010/06/23/reg_linux_guide_2/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2010/06/21/reg_linux_guide_1/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/01/running_windows_7_2025/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/22/linux_nonapproved_laptop/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/19/wine_7/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/03/wine_80_dxvk_21/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/18/wine_90_is_out/
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/24/wine_turns_10/
[27] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aDczFl6-MsYpXT5Ifr2O8AAAAYI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[28] https://flathub.org/apps/org.winehq.Wine
[29] https://archive.org/details/microsoftoffice97professional
[30] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/05/27/win10-vmware.jpg
[31] https://usebottles.com/
[32] https://flathub.org/apps/com.usebottles.bottles
[33] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Download
[34] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/19/lastos/
[35] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/linux_in_microsoft_excel/
[36] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/zorin_os_173/
[37] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/25/linux_6_14_day_late/
[38] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/
[39] https://www.theregister.com/2002/04/16/running_msoffice_on_linux/
[40] https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/28/review_software_codeweavers_crossover/
[41] https://www.theregister.com/2011/01/29/codeweavers_impersonator/
[42] https://www.theregister.com/2013/02/04/android_wine/
[43] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/19/crossover_apple_m1/
[44] https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/
[45] https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/adobe-photoshop-cs6
[46] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/
[47] https://lutris.net/
[48] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
[49] https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/
[50] https://snapcraft.io/steam
[51] https://flathub.org/apps/com.valvesoftware.Steam
[52] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Hypervisors
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.
Re: Hypervisors
> 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.
Re: Hypervisors
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.
Re: Hypervisors
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.
Re: Hypervisors
> 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.
Re: Hypervisors
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.
Re: Hypervisors
They mentioned Gnome Boxes, which is KVM, it defaults to user session vm's. Virt-Manager and later versions of Cockpit are both alternatives for a desktop user. I prefer Cockpit.
VMware
Somewhat off topic, but if VMWare is free then why all the recent licensing gouging from Broadcom? Doesn’t make sense
Re: VMware
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).
@Liam:
Great article on how to get Windows/Apps running under Linux. I've used every single method you've mentioned. I especially like CrossOver on ChromeOS, yes it costs money, but I find the utility very useful.
Cheers.
Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
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!!
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
Maybe a regional thing? In the UK Lenovo offer a (admittedly small) selection of systems with no bundled OS.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
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?
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
> 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.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
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.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
The Lenovo systems I have (one personal and one work) were both £50 or £60 cheaper without the OS selected. £100 to £120 less than with Windows Pro.
I think MS drastically discount the OS to OEM rather than subsidise the hardware.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
> £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.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
I bet they came with built in Ethernet too.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
in the UK - PC Specialist
Alternatively look at the wikipedia list of Clevo vendors for your country.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
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.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
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.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
Harbour is a splendid replacement for dBASE and FoxPro
FoxPro, wow!
I haven't heard that name in a long time.
I once a small helpdesk system in it far back in the distant mists of time.
Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!
A small addition: you can even install Edge in Linux.
Not that it would actually do any harm, but I'm not sure what you'd get from rebooting after installing WINE. I don't believe it has its own kernel module or anything, right?
It's to make Windows users feel more at home ;)
> 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.
Codeweavers
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.
Re: Codeweavers
> 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?
Re: Codeweavers
> 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.
Great article, and thank you for the additional detail about VirtualBox licensing - the VirtualBox Extension Pack caught a lot of people out in my company a while back...
I thought...
I thought most VM solutions had native GPU pass through and the technology isn't emulation per se. Am I missing something?
Re: I thought...
> 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/
"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.
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.
This is more like it (20 years too late)
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.