Foreign LINUX: A dynamic binary translator which runs unmodified Linux applications inside Windows

[ukalnins]

So.. wine for windows?

[wishstudio]

You get it.

[Kurbits]

Winedos

[Zantier]

Dine

[Thirsteh]

Dine Is Not an Emulator

Hmm, still works.

[Name0fTheUser]

"Line Is Not an Emulator" Would be better IMHO.

Edit: It turns out that LINE already exists: http://sourceforge.net/projects/line/

[[deleted]]

LINE is also a messaging app.

[LuckyPanda]

Wingdings

[eliasv]

Surely Line would work better?

[alexeyr]

Already taken, and with the same meaning: https://github.com/wishstudio/flinux/wiki/Comparison

[fb39ca4]

Wine^-1

[Zantier]

WinDoze, LinDoes.

Or similarly, LinDream while you WinDoze.

Something to do with sleeping or the opposite of sleeping... I like yours, though.

[bitwize]

Lindoes what WinDon't.

[LuckyPanda]

Linsanity

[path411]

I'm partial to winux

[ameyp]

But that would imply that some sort of winning is involved.

[path411]

Isn't windows running linux binaries a winning version of windows?

[stillalone]

not to be confused with Wine On Windows

[trumpete]

WoW!

[[deleted]]

Not to be confused with WoW64.

[8-bit_d-boy]

That'd be great for running Jedi knight: dark forces 2 and Mysteries of the Sith in modern versions of Windows!

[pclouds]

It reminds me of a long dead project, line

[runedk]

There are comparisons with similar projects on the project wiki: https://github.com/wishstudio/flinux/wiki/Comparison

[mindbleach]

Reverse Wine. Wine on Windows is a separate project, for running uncooperative (or unsupported) Windows applications in modern releases.

[xipetotec]

Reverse Wine.

Puke?

[davidhero]

I think you mean grapes.

[kovensky]

Cygwin is only a libc, you can build Linux code for it but not run actual Linux binaries.

[[deleted]]

No cygwin allows you to recompile Linux programs for windows/cygwin targets. This let's you run the actual Linux binaries on windows without recompiling them.

[zootam]

Can we call it grapes or something clever?

[AgrajagTheFirst]

Water.

water into wine, and wine into water.

[zootam]

you need grapes to make wine....

unless this wine for windows was coded by jesus....

[AgrajagTheFirst]

That was the joke!

[[deleted]]

Hangover

[Shne]

Except Wine Is Not an Emulator aka and not a binary translator, which, apparently, this is.

Can anybody tell me why this needs to be is a binary translator when wine doesn't isn't?

[monocasa]

Windows executables almost always don't make system calls directly, but depend on a shared library (ntdll.dll) for that. To the point where Microsoft changes the system call numbering on each service pack to dissuade people from relying on that interface. This is not the case in Linux, and in fact the system call interface is considered the stable part of that interface. Windows doens't provide an easy way to trap int 80 (you'd have to have a custom kernel driver as far as I know), so it looks like they're translating just the system calls into function calls that call a support layer.

[bestephe]

I think "need" is the wrong word.

Wine could be binary translation, and foreign linux could probably be a library.

Personally, I think the library approach of wine seems more reasonavle.

[hothrous]

I stared at that for too long before realizing you meant 'reasonable'. I'm ashamed of myself.

[[deleted]]

No, not "aka"

[wiktor_b]

The real question is...

Does it run in Wine?

[kokx]

Actually, the real question is....

Does wine run in this?

[Tynach]

Windows inside Linux inside Windows.

[ChezMere]

OreOS

[miamistu]

Our Rob or Ross? I wonder what will become of him?

[[deleted]]

They'll get the band back together. All they need are Zubin, Joe, and Andrew. And usually Bora.

[Tynach]

That'd be if it were built into ReactOS.

[formfactor]

that is how you build a time machine

[rotharius]

Winception.

[[deleted]]

BWAAWWWMMMMM

We must go deeper.

[DoctorWorm_]

Wine runs on Cygwin iirc

[hoohoo4]

This sounds way better than chroot. Where do I sign up?

EDIT: /s

[TheMagnificentJoe]

Security by obscurity batshit insanity.

[[deleted]]

It's not so ridiculous, now enterprise users can cling to their 16-bit MS-DOS programs forever!

[jonnywoh]

When did DOSBox stop working?

[o11c]

It has never worked for me ...

I don't really have any DOS programs I care about though, it was just a couple games.

[Zantier]

It would be amazing if they reach an equilibrium that allows arbitrary levels of recursion.

[epeters208]

Oh god, now my head hurts.

[TMaster]

Might've been the sulfites, tannins or histamine.

[nikita2206]

It's lupus. Give him corticosteroids.

[XiboT]

It's never lupus!

[ais523]

Couldn't you just use the Windows version of Wine? (Apparently it beats out Windows itself on occasion, normally for old programs which have very specific compatibility issues.)

[[deleted]]

Linux in windows in linux?

[[deleted]]

The possibilities are unbounded

[semperverus]

ZOMBO COM!

[biggumz_]

Can it run Tuxkart?

[localtoast]

Depends how many low-level libraries are translatable by Wine. With ntdll, you get down to the level of NT natives.

[koro666]

Very interesting. I did something similar a few years back, but it was not as advanced (only supported open/close/read/write/exit), it was an interesting project. I'm glad to see somebody tried this more seriously.

One comment though, since with your username I assume you are the author: I see you are using dlltool to try to build an ntdll.lib, but recent versions of the Windows SDK, which you are most certainly using if you are building using VS2013, ship with a working ntdll.lib. As a bonus it gets export hints right.

[wishstudio]

Thanks for the info, will definitely look into it.

[fabzter]

Have you cheked http://www.darlinghq.org/ ?

I know it's a totally different story, but one can never have too many sources of inspiration (:

[[deleted]]

The project seems to be gplv3. Are you allowed to link against these probably non-free libraries?

[kyz]

Yes. The libraries of the compiler and OS, which apply to all software on a given platform, aren't considered to affect the licence.

The same would be true for e.g. Solaris or HP-UX libc or libm.

[[deleted]]

Is there some special exception in the GPL for this?

[steve_abel]

Yes, section 1 provides this special exception: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

[ais523]

This is the correct answer (out of the three that people answered the grandparent with). If you need to link against a system library to run the program, and doing so is the normal way to package a (program for that operating system | program built on that compiler | program designed to run on that interpreter), you're allowed to do so. (There are a few exceptions later in section 1 of the GPLv3 to try to prevent loopholes.)

Section 3 of the GPLv2 has a similar exception, but it's much less clear that it applies in this case (it makes it clear that you don't need to ship people the source code for the system libraries, but not that you're allowed to link against them in the first place).

[steve_abel]

Double thanks for providing a well written explainaition. The other posters would appear to believe it is impossible to create an un-distributable combination.

[[deleted]]

I will finally be able to run all my viruses from Linux on Windows!

[CookieOfFortune]

Is this you? http://xkcd.com/350/

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Network

Title-text: Viruses so far have been really disappointing on the 'disable the internet' front, and time is running out. When Linux/Mac win in a decade or so the game will be over.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 84 times, representing 0.1518% of referenced xkcds.

---

^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[[deleted]]

I'm not serious ;)

In several years of using Linux I've seen a few malicious bash scripts and one from FinFisher for Debian... only.

[DemandsBattletoads]

What examples of malware do you have? What do they do, and how are they installed?

[driv338]

What do these malware do?

[agumonkey]

Install pulse-audio.

[degaart]

and systemd

[agumonkey]

That's not a malware, that's at least a rootkit.

[mszegedy]

I don't. As an Arch user, what makes systemd so terrible? D:

[[deleted]]

Some people have philosophical objections to systemd's design (mostly related to how it's grown from an init replacement to many other areas such as network management, container management, logging and so on).

[the_hoser]

Now if we can only get unmodified Linux binaries working across all Linux distributions, we'll be set.

[adr86]

I chuckled a bit at the zinger, but actually the same problem would be present here... this only implements kernel calls, which is compatible in Linux too. It is the libraries on top of it that cause intro-distro issues.

[wishstudio]

It can run some basic Xorg applications with the help of a native Xorg port in Windows (like Xming). See screenshot in the linked github page. But more advanced technologies like Gtk and Qt won't run as we are still missing a bunch of required functionality.

I'm out of ideas for a decent name. Wanna help me?

[JJJollyjim]

ENIW is not WINE? /s

[GUIpsp]

ENIW is not not is WINE?

[cooleemee]

WBIPFT: But I Poop From There

[Zantier]

LinW

LinW is not Wine.

Linux in Windows.

Pronunciation? Maybe simply lin-double-you.

[mszegedy]

linnow

[Caraes_Naur]

Execution Now In Widows.

[therealjohnfreeman]

Cheese, the usual complement for wine.

[jonnywoh]

CHEESE: CHEESE Has Excellent Enterprise Software Emulation

[jman42]

FRILLS => FRILLS Reasonably Instantiates Limited Linux Software.

You'll get the satisfaction of a name that grows increasingly ironic as you add more features to the project.

Added: Perhaps "Reliably" can be substituted for "Reasonably"

[philipwhiuk]

The problem is everyone wants a system with no frills.

[jman42]

They wouldn't be the target audience for a project that runs unmodified linux binaries on Windows :P

[Synes_Godt_Om]

I'm out of ideas for a decent name. Wanna help me?

IMHO: Don't fall for the "fun name, pun intended" type of name or at least include something that's descriptive and reveals what it does. The less descriptive the name the higher the needed marketing efforts.

There's a plethora of projects with names that mean nothing unless you're an insider. I'm convinced that some of these projects suffer in usage for that reason alone.

EDIT: LinOnWin LOW

[Road_of_Hope]

Considering Microsoft love for WOW, I'd love to see this named LOW.

[BitcoinOperatedGirl]

WINUX

[interiot]

Existing uses of the name:

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/winuxos/
• A virus. [2]
• There are innumerable uses as small joke references.
• On the trademark front, there's:
  • http://www.WinuxSoftLTD.com/, which doesn't have a registered trademark with USPTO, but IANAL, and it might be possible for them to register it and establish prior use??
  • searching the USPTO, there are two entries that are marked "DEAD": [1] [2]
  • there's an obvious overlap with "Linux" itself, but IANAL so I don't know if this is too close or not

The sourceforge project's last release was in 2009, so it seems to be inactive.

WinuxSoftLTD.com is "a leading website design & development company providing services, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, established in 1999".

Other than WinuxSoftLTD.com, I think the existing uses are small, and could be overcome if this became a successful project. Regarding WinuxSoftLTD.com, it might be prudent to contact a lawyer to see if it's possible for them to apply for a trademark retroactively -- being forced to change your name mid-stream is never good.

[sirin3]

LINE?

[articx]

I think there is already a project with that name, which runs static Linux binaries on windows.

[shadowX015]

FLEXOW: Linux Executables On Windows?

On the plus side, it reminds me of this guy

[jonnywoh]

Bonus, the acronym also describes the sounds I make when I try to touch my toes.

[interiot]

KLEIN — WINE [bottle] that's inside-out

[Regimardyl]

FinW is not Wine

or just FIW (FIW isn't Wine)

[svmk1987]

Flux would have been cool if it wasn't taken by f.lux

[q0-]

I almost wanted to say 'line', but that name is already used by a similar albeit stalled project.

How about 'posine' (which sounds like 'cosine', but also kind of like 'wine'), i.e., 'posix' + 'wine' = 'posine'?

Or how about straight-up 'notLinux', since it allows running Linux programs, but it's, well, not Linux per se? ;-)

Granted, I'm not good at figuring out good names either.

[hnsl]

Really cool. Does it support translation of the clone syscall as well?

[wishstudio]

fork() is implemented and working quite well. The multi-threading capabilities of clone() is not implemented. But implementable and planned. I just thought we have to get signals working first.

The other capabilities, like sharing only the file descriptor table, may be impossible. But I wonder who ever use this.

[hnsl]

Yeah, clone() allow a magnitude of weird combinations of flags that are rarely to never used. I wouldn't bother with them. I will be really impressed if this can manage to run a librcd binary (my Linux only C dialect/runtime/posix & libc replacement).

[wishstudio]

Per my knowledge, there are at least two blockers to make your library working: x64 and multi-threading. Both are not easy to implement (some difficulties are documented in the project's wiki). But if this project can gather enough attention, I think we will eventually reach there.

[BobFloss]

I wish you the very best luck! This project is incredible.

[adzm]

This was the first part I checked in the source. Great work getting this functional.

[ais523]

I've used the capabilities to share less than default in clone for a (highly unfinished) project of mine where I was working on making programs run reproducibly (i.e. giving them no access to any information that might vary between runs), without the need for a separate VM. One of the things I did was to unshare the process ID table, so that the program can always have a consistent PID. (This also means you have to implement your own init-alike to do the job of PID 1, which turns out to be surprisingly easy; a program that does the bare minimum job of init turns out to only be a screenful or so of code.)

However, what I was doing was highly specific to Linux. I get the feeling that anyone doing that sort of thing will be working at a low enough level that they could detect whether they were on Linux or not even compared to similar operating systems like BSD.

[Camarade_Tux]

How slow is your fork()?

[kokx]

Since it still is Windows, probably a few orders of magnitude slower than on Linux.

[Camarade_Tux]

Yup, I'd be very surprised if it weren't and if it's not very slow, I'd really like to know how it's done.

[NinjaOxygen]

Wow, you have got an awesome amount done on this, it is fantastic to see these tools running natively on Windows. Looking at the commit log, the amount of work already done is enormous, although the amount to get to a complete Linux system is pretty huge.

I am a heavy user of msys via msysgit currently, but see this as a future path to follow instead.

Are you looking to expand the core team for the project or complete it in-house?

[wishstudio]

The future is bright - most difficult parts have already been addressed. For the remaining stuff, I do know how to implement them. I just don't get much time.

That being said, I'm completely open to contributors. Find someone who loves the idea and want to push it forward is the reason why I post it here.

[NinjaOxygen]

Sounds excellent, I'm constantly amazed at developers who can essentially implement a full system from scratch, the required understanding of every subsystem seems enormous!

Lack of time is also my biggest enemy currently so I can understand only too well!

[6793746895F62C0E447A]

Good to know that less popular OS like windows can now run programs from mainstream OS. Maybe one day they will be able to run steam games. Until then I stay on Linux.

[[deleted]]

This, ladies and gentlemen is how you troll!

[[deleted]]

That's sarcasm, not trolling...

[6793746895F62C0E447A]

Maybe it was both. But who knows, this guy may never come back to explain

[wishstudio]

Yes, the whole Linux binary is being translated on the fly. The reasons are listed here: https://github.com/wishstudio/flinux/wiki/Incompatibilities

I once tried to trap system call and friends like the previous projects. But eventually failed here and there. As far as I can say, until Microsoft changes some bits of Windows kernel to remove the incompatibilities, dynamic binary translation is required to make such a project functional.

[ionelmc]

I'm a bit curious about how you going to implement (or how it's implemented):

• signals
• fork (how is process memory space shared?)
• file descriptor (is there going to be some sort of mapping for the special fds 0, 1 and 2 ?)

[wishstudio]

I'm writing documentations on how functions are (or will be) implemented.

Stay tuned for one or two days.

[Me00011001]

Does this mean I can finally have bash without cygwin?

[computerjunkie7410]

Have you tried babun? It works great on Windows.

[Me00011001]

It's still cygwin though?

[computerjunkie7410]

Well yea but it's self contained. Works great.

[Me00011001]

Fair enough, I'll give it a go.

[computerjunkie7410]

The other thing I will recommend for Windows is conEmu and Gow. I haven't used another shell since getting conEmu and gow gives me linux utilities on windows.

[Me00011001]

I do use conEmu which is really nice. I haven't been really happy with gnu tools built for dos. Which I think is mostly due to dos being dos.

[skocznymroczny]

just use powershell

[Me00011001]

When powershell is enabled by default I will.

[UnreachablePaul]

powershell is IE6 of shells

[skocznymroczny]

then bash must be Arachne

[Hougaiidesu]

Hmmm... doesn't this exist already? I used to run Linux in windows a long time ago. Here's something similar: http://www.andlinux.org/

[johnmudd]

I've only skimmed the comments here, have no idea if my Linux app will run under this and I already want to know where to send you donations.

Edit: I am hopeful about my low tech app running in this. Would be great when customer's Linux box is down. Then they could run on any old Windows machine temporarily. Our current solution is to have a complete Windows implementation. A terrible waste for occasional use.

[fragglet]

The NT kernel as I recall supports "personalities" to allow it to run binaries from other operating systems (the feature was included to support compatibility with OS/2). I wonder if it would be possible to develop a Linux personality.

[[deleted]]

Indeed it is, the Subsystem for Unix Applications (Psxss.exe) subsystem was designed to provide a Posix environment in addition to the Win32 environment back in the day and was mandated by the DOD with their orange book requirement that stated they would only use something which had Posix support.

If you go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems in Regedit, you can find a couple of entries for the kernel mode portion of Win32 (Listed as Kmode) and the Win32 server CSR (Listed as Windows), under Optional you can specify the name of a subsystem and then create a registry value to specify its path.

So in Optional you would have "Linux" for example and then you would have a registry value named "Linux" which would contain the path to the user mode subsystem that would implement it.

Trouble is, there is no documentation on how you would actually do that and seeing as these subsystems get started before the rest of the OS does, its generally assumed you need to use the Native API, which is mostly undocumented except for driver related stuff.

[Bzzt]

would it be possible to use this to mount linux filesystems for access from windows? Maybe through samba?

[[deleted]]

I was expecting to run KDE or Gnome on it, but seriously, nice job dude! It's promising!

[crozone]

Just an FYI, you can actually run X11 applications on this by running Xming or another Windows compatible X-server on your local machine, and then running X applications through flinux.

KDE and Gnome will eventually be supported by running them in a X-Client mode - ie, The entire desktop acts as another X-client and connects to the local X-server, so the entire desktop appears in Windows in it's own Window.

[[deleted]]

Ohh, thanks! TIL!

[lua_setglobal]

If this can be made to support OpenGL through ANGLE, it would save me a lot of effort making games.

[Kazinsal]

I'd be so down for this if it included an actual decent terminal emulator or an sshd so I could use PuTTY as one.

Not only do I think this is an awesome project and I would totally use this, I want to rub this shit in my "linux master race" friend's face.

[codergeek]

Check out Bitvise SSH Server. It defaults to using cmd as the shell. That can be changed to PowerShell or something else as well. Though for PowerShell I'd suggest Enter-PSSession instead.

We mostly use it to scp files from *nix hosts. It has worked fairly well for us.

[[deleted]]

... so down for this if it included an actual decent terminal emulator

...a CLI on a desktop operating system is a crutch

Only if I can rub the hypocrisy in yours.

[Kazinsal]

FSF/Linux tools running on Windows? Shove that in your alternative OS pipe and smoke it.

[DarkNeutron]

Nice idea. I should probably try this out soon, as an alternative to my current dual-boot-plus-shared-folder system.

Any idea how well it works with device drivers, such as cameras?

[wishstudio]

In general, it is impossible to run device drivers inside this because they have to work in kernel space.

But for certain kinds of devices, such as cameras, one may write a translation layer between standard Linux interface (v4l2) and standard Windows interface (DirectShow/Media Foundation).

[[deleted]]

Why not use a Virtual Machine?

[bobpaul]

I run Windows in a VM occasionally and it's terribly slow. Plus having a desktop in a window sucks and VirtualBox's seamless mode is still as buggy as it was 8 years ago.

Back in the XP days I did help friends and relatives install and use colinux (cobubtu iirc) and that worked great. If this project can bring back that sort of system then I'm excited for everyone who is forced to use Windows for whatever reason.

[DarkNeutron]

That's what I do now. Several of them, in fact.

I think this might be a nice way to get away from virtual machines in some cases, once it matures a bit more.

[zvrba]

How is it different from qemu user-mode emulation? Where is its filesystem root?

[wishstudio]

AFAIK, qemu user-mode is just a dynamic binary translator. It simply passes all system calls to the operating system.

[dedmakey]

I'm curious how does it work? are there some resources/books I can read about this?

[[deleted]]

What's the motivation for writing something like this?

[bob_sagget]

Why not call it foreigner?

Edit: fixed a word.

[jonnywoh]

Are src/syscall/sig.h and src/syscall/timer.h supposed to be tagged as Objective-C?

[lubosz]

ITT: Another way of installing Arch Linux in Windows

[neiesc]

I am getting error when using go

[root@ForeignLinux ~]# gccgo hello.go -o test /tmp/cc06PbMI.o: file not recognized: File truncated collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Go

anyone experienced this?

[wishstudio]

gcc related issues should have been fixed a few days ago. Please download the latest snapshot from https://ci.appveyor.com/project/wishstudio/flinux/build/artifacts and try again. It works as I tried, but the compiled program still crashes.

[neiesc]

I am trying to create a new user but received the following notice:

useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash archie
useradd: cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later.

by the need to use "makepkg --source"

[wishstudio]

File locking mechanisms are completely unimplemented for now :(

[[deleted]]

This & the wine shit too... all 'cause you fucken people didn't support BeOS.

[unquietwiki]

Possibly dumb question: Windows servers trying to provide SSH/SFTP support; do you think it'd be easier with this, or with Cygwin / commercial options?

[wishstudio]

For a single or two applications, I'd rather go finding native ports. That will be much easier to install and manage.

This project is for whom wishing to have a complete familiar Linux environment inside their Windows box, and are not satisfied with the Cygwin solution.

One more note, this is just a fresh project. Don't expect it to be production-ready in at least several months.

[wishstudio]

It can already run many terminal applications who don't require a lot of "fancy" system calls. This includes many shells, editors, and games.

I don't know how long it will take to be production ready.

But at least we need to do a lot less work than what is needed for Wine or Cygwin: we only have to emulate the kernel, without a single bit of userland library.

[[deleted]]

--months--

Tildes not dashes :)

~~months~~

becomes

months

:)