Advanced Computer Concepts

[o_O]

Please excuse the double-post and thread resurrection.

So I jumped on the latest Linux bandwagon and managed to get a Linux desktop environment integrated with Windows XP. As you can see, I've got Xfce4 running with Compiz-Fusion for my Linux environment.

I have VirtualBox as my virtualization software, since it's noticeably faster than either qemu + kqemu or VMWare + VMWare Tools. It's also possible to get VirtualBox running completely headless (which you can do in qemu, but VMWare always had a grey frame to the window), so you can get rid of the titlebar and window borders. With a headless VirtualBox, Linux and Windows are still separate from each other, so this it where VirtualBox really gets ahead of VMWare.

You can start a remote session of your VM with VirtualBox, so you can use rdesktop with XP's RDP protocol to remote-desktop into your VM. Once you change a few registry keys, you can configure remote-XP only to show the taskbar, and not the desktop when a user logs in. With all of this configured, the VM windows and programs will appear to Linux as additional programs.

I did have some difficulty - in order to use RDP you can't use NAT; each machine needs its own IP. I have a wireless connection and while it worked fine with a wired network bridge into my VM, the packet encapsulation with wireless is incompatible with a bridge. I managed to get around that by (searching for hours and) finding the blog of some guy called Hazard who wrote a program called parprouted which uses ip forwarding with iptables rather than bridging.

I have 2GB RAM, with 700MB into the VM with XP and 1.3GB for Gentoo with Compiz-Fusion and everything is smooth as. The redraw on the VM is a bit crappy but that's because everything is going through my router first. See the screenshots for what it's like.

[Yamaneko]

Are the XP windows fully managed by Compiz-Fusion?

[crono_logical]

That looks impressive Can you drag the XP Windows so you can have two on different faces of your desktop cube?

[o_O]

Are the XP windows fully managed by Compiz-Fusion?

For the most part. Any desktop effect from Compiz-Fusion can be applied to XP windows, but sometimes the effect is overridden by XP's window management. For example, if you drag an XP window by the titlebar it will override the wobbly windows plugin, but alt+dragging the window will apply the wobbly effect. Minimizing/closing/maximizing the windows uses whatever animation plugins you have enabled in Compiz-Fusion.

[q=crono_logical]That looks impressive Can you drag the XP Windows so you can have two on different faces of your desktop cube? [/q]

It depends. Any window that makes use of alpha transparency will only show on the active face of the cube, and the part of it that's on another face will appear as whatever colour the desktop is set to in XP. The only application that it happened to me on was Windows Media Player in skin mode. Everything else worked fine.

[Yamaneko]

Is it useful (productivity-wise) or is it more just because you can?

[o_O]

I did it for no reason other than because I can.

I can definitely see how it would be useful though. Provided you have enough RAM, you can run things like Photoshop; if you have DRI enabled you can run 3DS Max, etc. For users who need elements of both operating systems, it's a hell of a lot easier than dual-booting.

[Shoeberto]

I remember reading about that stuff a few months back, but haven't tried it yet. Doesn't seem like there's many programs it'd do much for though! Unless somehow it pipes graphics through to the GPU instead of doing software rendering so I can play games - any chance of that working out?

[o_O]

I remember reading about that stuff a few months back, but haven't tried it yet. Doesn't seem like there's many programs it'd do much for though! Unless somehow it pipes graphics through to the GPU instead of doing software rendering so I can play games - any chance of that working out?

Even if the graphics calculations were made on the GPU, it'd be far too slow since everything is done remotely over RDP, unfortunately. If there were some way to run remote apps locally though, it could be possible. I can run Morrowind in a local VM on a fairly conservative setting, but only with DRI enabled. That's with my 6600GT. I just bought a 7950GT, so when my new PSU arrives it will be interesting to see if it makes a difference to the virtualized games.

[Endless]

I did have some difficulty - in order to use RDP you can't use NAT; each machine needs its own IP.

I connect daily from work to my home computer, which is behind a router with NAT. All I had to do to make it work was to enable port forwarding on the RDP port.
If you want to make it work with different computers, change the RDP port on the other machines (it's a registry key), and port forward them.

[bipper]

I did it for no reason other than because I can.

I can definitely see how it would be useful though. Provided you have enough RAM, you can run things like Photoshop; if you have DRI enabled you can run 3DS Max, etc. For users who need elements of both operating systems, it's a hell of a lot easier than dual-booting.

Also, server consolidation

[Odaisé Gaelach]

I did it for no reason other than because I can.

Good enough reason for me!

So I'm confused: the host is Gentoo Linux, and Windows XP is running as the guest in VirtualBox, correct? Or is it more complicated than that?

[o_O]

[q=Endless]I connect daily from work to my home computer, which is behind a router with NAT. All I had to do to make it work was to enable port forwarding on the RDP port.
If you want to make it work with different computers, change the RDP port on the other machines (it's a registry key), and port forward them.[/q]

I didn't realise that.
I could be something to do with VirtualBox's VRDP server then.

I did it for no reason other than because I can.

Good enough reason for me!

So I'm confused: the host is Gentoo Linux, and Windows XP is running as the guest in VirtualBox, correct? Or is it more complicated than that?

That's right. The complicated part is getting networking going. You'll need to know your network hardware. Wireless probably won't work with a conventional bridge except for a few VLANs that are made for the job; an ethernet LAN supports bridges fine but you can also use ip forwarding, etc.

[crono_logical]

I'd probably go the iptables way and forward/NAT traffic from the virtual machine to the LAN rather than trying to bridge anything, since that should work regardless of type of connection - wired, wireless, or even a virtual VPN interface since iptables wouldn't care when set up right

[Odaisé Gaelach]

You can start a remote session of your VM with VirtualBox, so you can use rdesktop with XP's RDP protocol to remote-desktop into your VM. Once you change a few registry keys, you can configure remote-XP only to show the taskbar, and not the desktop when a user logs in. With all of this configured, the VM windows and programs will appear to Linux as additional programs.

D'you think it would it be possible in reverse? I mean, with Windows as the host and Linux as the guest?

[o_O]

You can start a remote session of your VM with VirtualBox, so you can use rdesktop with XP's RDP protocol to remote-desktop into your VM. Once you change a few registry keys, you can configure remote-XP only to show the taskbar, and not the desktop when a user logs in. With all of this configured, the VM windows and programs will appear to Linux as additional programs.

D'you think it would it be possible in reverse? I mean, with Windows as the host and Linux as the guest?

It could be. You'd need to set up a bridge or ip forwarding system from Windows, and configure Linux to use the connection. I don't know if the Windows binary of VirtualBox is compiled with support for VRDP serving (or USB support, for that matter). The GPL'd version doesn't have either.

With Windows as the guest, you configure it not to show the desktop via the registry; I'm sure it's possible to do that in Linux, but you have to figure out how (and it would vary between DEs). Maybe take out the desktop program from whatever rc script starts the DE services, or just use a WM like flux without a desktop component.

You'd also need to be RDPing into Linux, and I couldn't say how that would work. I don't know of any servers for Linux or clients for Windows.