How To: Run Linux Applications in Windows
Linux fans that need a Windows app or two can take advantage of WINE, but what about Windows fans that need to run Linux apps? If you’re lucky someone has already ported your favorite Linux app over to Windows, but if they haven’t, you might want to check out andLinux.
AndLinux isn’t quite the same thing as WINE, since andLinux actually loads the full Linux kernel, but andLinux does make Linux apps look like they’re running natively on Windows. In other words they behave somewhat like Windows apps running in the “Coherence Mode” of Parallels or VMWare on the Mac.
Under the hood, andLinux uses CoLinux as its core. CoLinux is an unholy merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC. As with WINE, the fact that it’s not emulated means you get a significant performance boost.
As for why you’d want to do this, well, Amarok is a nice alternative to Windows Media Player or iTunes and those working in scientific fields probably have a number of Linux-based apps that haven’t been ported to Windows. But aside from the practical, it’s also just plain cool.
Adam Pash over at Lifehacker has put together a nice tutorial showing you how to download and install KDE Ubuntu with andLinux. Once you have things up and running everything runs quite seamlessly — you can install new Linux apps with Synaptic and you even get some right-click context menus in Windows to open files in Linux applications.
Keep in mind that andLinux is a beta and may have some rough edges, but if you’re dying to get Linux and Windows playing nice, it should do the job. Another option is to use Wubi, which does something similar using Ubuntu and even offers some bleeding edge builds of the upcoming Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron.
If you’re looking to the opposite — Windows apps running in a “Coherence Mode” on Linux — a Lifehacker reader points out this tutorial which uses VirtualBox to do roughly the same thing (though apparently VirtualBox’s seamless mode doesn’t work with Compiz desktop effects running).
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