A Virtualized Linux System For Windows

getupstandup1 writes "Ulteo today unveiled their Virtual Desktop (screenshots, download) which is a free, full Linux desktop that runs seamlessly on Windows. It's interesting because it's not running under Xen or VMWare, but instead uses the coLinux patch, which they claim allows the system to achieve 'great performance, close to a native installation on the PC.' No need to reboot the system anymore to switch from Windows to Linux." We discussed Ulteo when the Ubuntu-derived distro was announced a year back.

Re:Sweet

[DanWS6]

I have two boxes. One runs XP which I use for gaming and web surfing, the other runs Gentoo which I use for development as well as a media box/file server. Right now both machines are in the same room so I sometimes use the GUI on the linux box but no KVM and one monitor/keyboard/mouse is a pain. That wouldn't be such an issue if DVI KVM's weren't so insanely expensive.

Firstly, nothing stops you dual-booting both Linux and Windows in order to understand some of the benefits Linux could potentially bring to you.

Yes there is, I have no desire to dual boot. I don't want to do and thus I choose not to, just like I choose not to give up my XP box because I choose to be able to play games.

But can we please stop with the "I won't run Linux because of lack of games" statements because they are meaningless."

I'll stop with that statement just as soon as I can load up Crysis, TF2, HL2, etc and get the same if not better performance as running them under XP (but not vista because that's just too easy). =D Believe me if NVidia opened up their drivers and game developers started releasing linux binaries for major games I'd have no problem switching over to linux only.

Re:You're DOING IT WRONG!

[Kirkoff]

There are a bunch of linux/x apps that I use at home I'd love to be able to use on my windows box at work. Think of stuff like Kate for text editing.

The Humorless Language Nazi Explains it All

[fm6]

Whenever people hear a word that ends with "s" (or that sounds like it should), they assume that there's some silly grammatical rule that they need to know about. There is a rule, but it's so hard to follow, you shouldn't even try.

Here's the rule: a lot of words that end with "-us" (not all of them! more on that in a moment) are borrowed from Latin. In that language, a noun ending with "-us" is a singluar form (dominus, lord; servus, slave) that takes a plural form ending in "-i" (domini, lords; servi, slaves). In theory, it's more "correct" to use foreign inflections with foreign words. So instead of "octopuses", "styluses", and "circuses", people say "octopi", "styli", and "circi".

No, wait, nobody says "circi", do they? It's the "correct" usage, because it's a Latin word, but the established usage is "circuses".

The other examples I gave are commonly used, but are in no sense "correct". "Octopus" does not come from Latin: it's a Greek word, and the Greek plural is "octopods". "Stylus" is Latin, but it's misspelled Latin: the Romans spelled it "stilus". It got changed to "stylus" because somebody thought it was somehow derived from the Greek word "stylos". But it's not, so the "correct" way to refer to that thing that comes with your PDA is "stilus" and "stili".

But to heck with being "correct". It's the tar baby of the literate. Just use the rules you learned in grade school and be done with it.

Re:As opposed to... andLinux?

[hedwards]

It's kinda amazing being able to get an awful lot of stuff just running apt-get from a terminal, while inside XP. A real VM is far secure of course. Security decent hardware firewalls and no small amount of obscurity doesn't bother me too horible.

I was trying to figure out what the point of this really is.

Running Win apps on Linux is because there isn't a replacement for it or one that interoperates. Running Linux in a VM on Windows is good for things like security, but running Linux apps on Win just because, seems like an odd choice to me. Especially since one can get OO.org for Win, Firefox for win, Thunderbird for win, Gimp for win etc. Ok, so the last one is kind of cludgy. (Or it was last time I checked a few years ago, I'm sure it's much less so now)

There probably are a few which don't have Win versions, but VMs can be had for free, if you're a home or non-commercial user.

Re:The Humorless Language Nazi Explains it All

[hedwards]

But to heck with being "correct". It's the tar baby of the literate. Just use the rules you learned in grade school and be done with it.

What's correct is what the vast majority of people do. That doesn't mean that using words like alot is really proper, but with the number of people misspelling that one, we may as well just admit that the spelling has changed, it would save an awful lot of red ink.

These sorts of arguments pop up frequently, and really as long as people can tell what is being said, there isn't really a good reason to argue too much about it. The speakers of the various languages will figure out a spelling, which will then be declared archaic and replaced with something knew. It's been happening for millenia.

Really, we ought to be migrating towards rules which are like the ones in grade school, except easy to understand and predictable. Some irregularities are going to crop up. But those should really be reserved for times when the alternative can't be pronounced.

Re:Backwards

[BrentH]

You know what I do these days is running Ubuntu inside a (seamless) virtual machine in Windows. Windows has to be native for the games, and it doesn't matter how often Windows is borked, the Ubuntu VM image is on a different partition and as soon as I've reinstalled windows I can load that image up and *boom* my entire desktop with all my sweet little apps are there again without reinstalling anything. Best of both worlds. The only thing better (aside from Linux supporting my games ;)) would be virtualizable graphics, so that I can run Linux native and Windows in a virtual machine.

Re:You're DOING IT WRONG!

[bloodninja]

Oy vey. Talk about a solution in search of a problem. WINE exists because there is a huge amount of Windows applications that would be ideal to run on Linux. What on earth is the point of this? Am I just missing something completely obvious?

At the university I _have_ to use Windows. I even have a hard time booting LiveCDs. So I depend a lot on portableapps.com and my USB flash drive. If I could get a whole Linux environment up, running at near-native performance (not like qmeu that barely runs) then I'd be set.

Re:Vs. Cygwin

[tangent3]

Yes, and definitely I would say it seems that coLinux was made with being a better alternative to cygwin/mingw in mind. I've been happily using AndLinux (Kubuntu + coLinux distro) running on my Windows XP for C++ development.

Re:As opposed to... andLinux?

[loftyhauser]

I'm an engineer/professor, and I teach computational fluid dynamics. I develop, test and run numerical simulations on UNIX systems, but I require a Windows system (for applications, mostly). I've found that andLinux is great for developing the applications on my Windows system. I tend to use command line tools, mostly, which are a pain in the MS world. Have you ever tried building a UNIX makefile code on Windows? And cygwin just doesn't cut it (OpenMPI doesn't work).