Emulating windows in Linux mint?

[Shanewaz Sultan]

After 15 years of windows use, I have recently started dual booting with Linux mint. I want to use Linux fulltime as I gain more knowledge.

 

I have found out that I can emulate windows on top of Linux distros.

 

If feasible that would be a good thing for me, as dual booting is complicated and frustrating for me and I don't get enough playtime in Linux.

If I cud do this that wud mean I'm always in Linux and whatever I can't figure out I can just emulate.

 

I have a fairly capable system and I am competent enough to follow and understand tutorials/ instructions. And I understand that there will be a performance penalty.

 

All that being said, is it a good idea?!

Thanks for reading 

[Eigenvektor]

Depends on what you mean by emulate.

 

You can use Proton/Wine to play many games and run some Windows software. It will work mostly out-of-the-box for many Steam games (but not all and not always perfect).

 

Wine is not emulation, it is a re-implementation of the Windows API that may or may not work for the software you need. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you'll either need to find alternative software or find another way to run it.

 

For example, you can use a virtual machine (e.g. VirtualBox) to run an actual Windows installation on top of Linux. That will run most software, but has caveats when it comes to things like 3D acceleration (either not possible or requires a second GPU and a more complicated setup for GPU passthrough). It can also conflict with some keyboard shortcuts of either Windows/Linux, so may take some getting used to.

 

Dual boot has the advantage that you have two independent native environments. So no performance loss, or weird keyboard interactions or anything. But of course you have the annoyance if having to reboot, if you need anything from the other OS.

[Shanewaz Sultan]

7 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Depends on what you mean by emulate.

 

You can use Proton/Wine to play many games and run some Windows software. It will work mostly out-of-the-box for many Steam games (but not all and not always perfect).

 

Wine is not emulation, it is a re-implementation of the Windows API that may or may not work for the software you need. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you'll either need to find alternative software or find another way to run it.

 

For example, you can use a virtual machine (e.g. VirtualBox) to run an actual Windows installation on top of Linux. That will run most software, but has caveats when it comes to things like 3D acceleration (either not possible or requires a second GPU and a more complicated setup for GPU passthrough). It can also conflict with some keyboard shortcuts of either Windows/Linux, so may take some getting used to.

 

Dual boot has the advantage that you have two independent native environments. So no performance loss, or weird keyboard interactions or anything. But of course you have the annoyance if having to reboot, if you need anything from the other OS.

My main goal is to spend most of my time in Linux. Tinkering and learning.

As such I'm willing to do the time and get my hands dirty.

I have a laptop to bail me out during a disaster.

So any pointers on how I should get started? Any links? Ideas?

[Donut417]

11 minutes ago, Shanewaz Sultan said:

So any pointers on how I should get started?

Figure out what you primarily want to use the machine for. What software you need to run etc. There are a lot of software that works on Linux, like VLC and FIrefox. There are also cloud based things like Google's productivity software. Games you can use Wine, Lutris or Proton. In cases you cant use any of those you can do a VM like stated above.

 

I dont have links to resources but Id say the biggest thing to learn is the Terminal. I dont care how easy they say distro A or distro B, etc is easy to use. You eventually will need to use the terminal. Im no expert but Im not afraid to go poking around as I grew up using MS-DOS.

[Guest]

I'm not sure what your asking for. If you just want to run Windows Software on Linux you can use WINE but it's compatibility is pretty poor outside of gaming.

WineDB,  ProtonDB, Are We Anticheat Yet,  lutris, are a good place to check compatibility. You may be able to increase WINE compat by using a protonified build such as wine-ge-custom.

Some tools that can help automate this are Bottles, Lutris, Steam, and Heroic Games Launcher. All of which have their own Proton/Wine builds available.

 

Keep in mind that just because it works today, doesn't mean it will tomorrow, and vice versa.

 

If you want to run a full version of Windows on top of Linux you can look into Virtualization. For Windows guests the two best options are

• VMware Workstation
  • The only solution that has decent 3D acceleration for Windows Guests without a secondary GPU
• KVM + libvirt with GPU Passthrough
  • Typically relies on having a secondary GPU and your motherboard properly supporting IOMMU Groups
    • If you have a Intel CPU (5th to 10th Gen) you may be able to leverage Intel GVT-g
      • 12th Gen and newer may be able to leverage SR-IOV - I don't know of any documentation on this.
    • If you have a iGPU and dGPU, you may be able to allocate the dGPU to the VM
    • You can use a single GPU but you have to kill your session and start the VM, at this point you would be better off dual booting.
  • For more information refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
    • It's for Arch but if you can figure out your distros packages you should be able to adopt it. I'm sure there are other guides as well.
  • Virt-Manager is a great tool to help with this.
  • Definitely recommend using a dummy display adapter, looking-glass, and pipewire+jack.

If you plan to play games in a VM, be aware that some AntiCheat's consider it a bannable offense.

[Eigenvektor]

2 hours ago, Shanewaz Sultan said:

So any pointers on how I should get started? Any links? Ideas?

My primary advice would be to simply start using Linux, see how it treats you

 

There are so many possibilities, it's difficult to recommend a tutorial without a more concrete question.

 

I would install your distribution of choice, install Steam, see if your games run.

 

Maybe install Wine, see if the programs you want to use work. Provided they aren't already available natively, like many browsers (Chrome, Chromium, Firefox) or mail clients (Thunderbird) or video players (VLC).

 

Maybe search for an alternative if software isn't available directly for Linux (Photoshop -> Gimp/Krita). Of course they aren't exactly the same, but unless you have a specific need might work well enough, and likely better than using Windows software through

[YellowJersey]

Could try setting up a Windows virtual machine? I've never had any luck with that, but I understand it's a thing.

[Kilrah]

Yep, and if you have a dual boot you could run your existing install as a VM. I do it the other way, I run mainly Windows but have my Mint install available as a VM to avoid reboots.

[Shanewaz Sultan]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Yep, and if you have a dual boot you could run your existing install as a VM. I do it the other way, I run mainly Windows but have my Mint install available as a VM to avoid reboots.

Any links or articles on how to do that?

[Kilrah]

No, but just install your favorit VM engine (using vmware since it's now free for personal use) and instead of creating a vdisk pass the physical drive or partition(s) you need.

[10leej]

On 6/1/2024 at 5:56 AM, Kilrah said:

No, but just install your favorit VM engine (using vmware since it's now free for personal use) and instead of creating a vdisk pass the physical drive or partition(s) you need.

why vmware when you already have kvm on the system?

[Ralphred]

On 6/1/2024 at 5:04 AM, YellowJersey said:

Could try setting up a Windows virtual machine? I've never had any luck with that, but I understand it's a thing.

Virtual Machine Manager makes using qemu a simple box ticking exercise. Yeah, there are a couple of things that need to be turned on in bios, and in the kernel, but this should be default for most distro's now.

I used a previous iteration of https://atlasos.net to install on my "windows VM", and the improvements made by those devs make it snappier than a vanilla native windows install, I do run it on it's own SSD though, so YMMV.

 

Technically, if you have windows already on a separate drive, you should be able to sysprep it and effectively "import the drive" so next time it boots it's a VM and "just works", but I don't have the patience or a spare drive to test this.

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, 10leej said:

why vmware when you already have kvm on the system?

I'm on Windows so I don't, I have Hyper-V but that's pretty miserable to use since it lacks all the convenient things like dynamic display resizing, shortcuts to bind USB devices etc...

[Required]

Hi
I would like switch from MS to. But sadly there are Software from some Vendors who are only for Win. The are talking via an Com Port to the HW. I try to run some of the SW to get some Win Software running but I am not got them running. Are there some How to do it and ran Software beside from Games in Mint?

Thanks

[gentlemanspot]

On 6/2/2024 at 8:28 PM, 10leej said:

why vmware when you already have kvm on the system?

 

VMware would be more user-friendly than KVM,  that's my guess 

[RollyShed]

On 6/1/2024 at 9:32 PM, Shanewaz Sultan said:

Any links or articles on how to do that?

Have you looked at the Linux Mint discussion forum?

https://forums.linuxmint.com/

Most of the answers are there and any missing, ask.