Posted on 01/17/2005 12:05:20 PM PST by ShadowAce
We are delirious with joy, or maybe it is just that we've spent too long staring at the screen. . . . Whatever, we just found the coolest hack that you just have to check out!
We're playing with Debian Linux running cooperatively with Windows. Yes, you might go back and re-read that sentence. This fascinating system is called coLinux and it allows the Linux kernel to run as a program or service under Windows 2000 or XP without using a commercial PC virtualization system such as User Mode Linux or VMware.
Specifically, coLinux - a port of the 2.6 kernel - is "special driver software on the host operating system [that executes] the coLinux kernel in a privileged mode [known as ring 0 or supervisor mode]," says coLinux development team leader and project originator Dan Aloni.
Aloni goes on: "By constantly switching the machine's state between the host operating system state and the coLinux kernel state, coLinux is given full control of the physical machine's [Memory Management Unit] (such as paging and protection) in its own specially allocated address space, and is able to act just like a native kernel, achieving almost the same performance and functionality that can be expected from a regular Linux which could have ran on the same machine stand-alone."
To share hardware with the host operating system, coLinux does not access I/O devices directly. Aloni says coLinux "interfaces with emulated devices provided by the coLinux drivers in the host operating system. . . . All real hardware interrupts are transparently forwarded to the host operating system, so this way the host operating system's control of the real hardware is not being disturbed and thus it continues to run smoothly." p> The final crucial point is that, "since coLinux uses the same binary format for user-space executables as native Linux, coLinux can load and run an existing unmodified Linux distribution concurrently with the host operating system."
In other words, coLinux is really Linux and thus becomes a remarkably effective platform for learning how Linux works and for running those cool Linux-only applications under Windows.
You can find coLinux at www.colinux.org. Download the installer from the coLinux project's Sourceforge site, and run the install program.
The installation process is simple, but avoid installing coLinux under the "Program Files" subdirectory (or for that matter any other subdirectory with a long name), otherwise you'll need to know the subdirectory's short name when you get around to configuring the system.
Once you have coLinux installed you'll need a Linux distribution root image - an image of an installed distro that's stored in a file. You can download a distro root image file - we used the Debian version.
The root image files in this library have an extension of bz2, as they are compressed with bzip2. You can decompress these files with bzip2 or TUGZip.
You'll need to create a swap file which you can download as a bzip2 compressed root image - choose a version that is the same size as the amount of RAM you plan to allocate for coLinux to run.
You are now ready to edit the configuration file so that the coLinux loader knows where its disk devices are (really Windows files), which swap device to use (again, it's a Windows file), which kernel to use, how much memory to use (by default it is a miserly 64M bytes), and how networking is set up.
To get networking working you have three choices: You can use network address translation, enable Windows Connection Sharing or set up a bridged network connection. We recommend using the Windows Connection Sharing configuration just to get started.
If you have set up everything right, then open a command window in the coLinux subdirectory and enter the command:
colinux-daemon.exe -c d:\progra1\coLinux\colinux.default.xml
You should see the coLinux system initialize and whatever distribution you selected should load. A window titled "Cooperative Linux Console" should open and the rest of the boot process will be displayed until finally you see "colinux login:" to which the answer - if this is the first time you've run coLinux - should be "root" without a password.
If you know Linux, enjoy. If you don't, then next week we'll delve deeper . . . you can shut down your coLinux with "shutdown -h now."
No, because you still need the Linux distribution.
bump for later..
Plus you still need to run Windows also.
FYI, most aren't from the US.
http://distrowatch.com/
Not if things keep going to their plan, you won't need any US software, ever again. At least not any you have to pay for.
Red Hat is the Linux market share leader at about 50%. Red Hat is American.
I doubt it's 50%, and it's definitely dropping. Why wouldn't it, when they give it away for free? The Chinese rename it Red Flag, in case you didn't know. What do you think is bound to be #1 in China and Asia, Red Hat they have to pay for, or a free copy labled "Red Flag" instead?
Is CoLinux supposed to be able to run XWindows? Got to the command line. Guess I can practice shell scripts or something. But I really haven't had time to play any more with it.
I don't really know. Since I never boot up into Windows, I haven't installed it.
I'll let you know then.
Much easier to run Linux in a virtual machine. Though running as a service does have a certain geek factor to it.
"Windows" and "honest" do not belong in the same sentence...
If Netraverse ever comes out with Win4Linux 5.0, all the problems of Windows XP will be solved for good. Windows will run within a Unix kernel. And Bill Gates will be wondering why he didn't think of it first!
Wrong again. Windows just hides that complexity from the user using file associations. Every time you start up, say, an Access database by clicking on the database itswelf, the system actually performs a comand very similar to the one shown above.
In this case, there are no file associations for the linux images, so the user must enter in the command himself.
If you don't know what you are talking about, please refrain from criticizing.
CoLinux is only the Windows code to run the Linux kernel as a process. If the version of Linux you have decided to run with CoLinux has X installed and configured, then yes it will run.
Think I downloaded Gentoo Deluxe onto my laptop (where I installed CoLinux).
I don't know if that has it or not. I worked from home today so I didn't need to fire up my laptop to check it out.
On a side note, I've been trying to decide which distro to run on a regular basis. I've downloaded several and installed into XP (Virtual PC) to try out.
All are working well but I've been trying to get SuSE 9.2 and all the mirrors I've checked out either SUCK or the download is corrupt.
If anyone knows of a speedy site from which I can download SuSE 9.2, I'd appreciate it.
I personally like Fedora Core.
Yeah, I loaded up FC3. Need to start working with it.
Linux bumptiy bump
ROFL
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