My Technology Solution

Sometimes, we need to run some Linux applications in a Windows machine. There are several solutions to overcome this problem:

1. Use dual-boost, install two OS in a single machine.

2. Use a virtualization software, such as Virtual Box, WMWare, or Virtual PC.
3. Use Cygwin.
4. Use coLinux.

I personally tried option 2, 3, and 4, but not option 1 as I do not want to mess up my system. I started off using virtualization software-Virtual Box. It was a good piece of software, but it consume a lot of memory resources. So I continue my quest in finding solutions for using Linux applications in Windows, and I came across Cygwin. Cygwin was a good software, too. I tried successfully several Linux applications with it. But, the down side for Cygwin will be it does not support unicode, which cause me several failures during compilation of programs.  Again, I continue my journey of finding a suitable software, and I found coLinux.

I wouldn’t say coLinux is the ultimate solution for using Linux applications in Window, but it is the best solution I found for the moment. I installed coLinux 0.7.3 in my Vista machine with Debian 4.0 minimal OS, and everything looks fine. I added in Xming-Xserver for Window, and allow myself to use Linux GUI applications, such as Synaptic.

Figure above showed both xterm and Synaptic running in my Vista machine.

So, what is coLinux? CoLinux is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. It does not use virtualization, thus reduce a lot of memory usage.

For the coming posts, most of my topic will be surrounding coLinux. The installation of coLinux, the setup, etc. will be discussed.