Of course you seen the hip new eye candy from people like Beryl or Compiz.
For example here is something that may be actually usefull for once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eotwBwXquqw&NR
It's the ability to nest multiple windows into a single 'window' and then flip between them. New feature. Sort of like tabs in firefox, but at a window managment level instead of a application level.
(btw, in the video the effect is purposely made to run slow so you can tell what is going on. In practice it would be very fast flip)
Now, as you know, migrating or using Linux isn't realy that usefull for people that still require Windows applications for various things. (like Work or school).
So one of the ways to work around it is to use Virtualization. Of course previously machines were limited in performance and capabilities, and with Vmware Workstation it was expensive and sometimes difficult.
Linux has always had Qemu, but that was slow.
Nowadays you have KVM (kvm.sourceforge.net, and now with the default vanilla kernel 2.6.20), which is a kernel-level item for using the Linux kernel as a hypervisor. What that means is that you can use it to make a hacked version of Qemu very fast. Unfortunately those of you with slightly older hardware that doesn't support Intel's VT or AMD's SVM features can't use it.
So that brings me to the first thing, which is Kqemu.
Kqemu is a kernel module used for accelerating Qemu. Unfortunately it has been propriatory for a long time, which limits it's usefullness. However now the programmer has decided to GPL Kqemu.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/index.html
This should allow userland applications to be executed directly in userspace and kernels of your system will run with limited emulation. (the problem with x86 is that kernels running in protected memory space cannot normally be run directly in userspace, they require virtualization to similate being ran in kernelspace which occurs stiff penalties for performance traditionally). This will give you a nice performance boost over regular Qemu and make it usefull for most desktop applications if your unable to run KVM.
Also Qemu generally supports using Kqemu out of the box. So it's not very difficult to setup. It's a kernel module compile, which if your new to Linux isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's not realy that difficult either.
The second part is 'coherance'. That is you run Windows applications as if they were native applications on your Linux desktop. That is they show up as individual Windows that you can switch between and all sorts of fun stuff. It's done using a trick with rdesktop and Windows XP Pro's remote desktop support.
Also Qemu has support for sharing a folder on your Linux system (via Samba) as a drive for your windows system. This will make file handling much more simplier between the two systems.
Screenshots and howtos for Ubuntu users are aviable at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo
And before anybody asks:
Nope, this is not usefull for any game requiring 3d acceleration. It's unaccelerated only.
I some people find this usefull.
For example here is something that may be actually usefull for once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eotwBwXquqw&NR
It's the ability to nest multiple windows into a single 'window' and then flip between them. New feature. Sort of like tabs in firefox, but at a window managment level instead of a application level.
(btw, in the video the effect is purposely made to run slow so you can tell what is going on. In practice it would be very fast flip)
Now, as you know, migrating or using Linux isn't realy that usefull for people that still require Windows applications for various things. (like Work or school).
So one of the ways to work around it is to use Virtualization. Of course previously machines were limited in performance and capabilities, and with Vmware Workstation it was expensive and sometimes difficult.
Linux has always had Qemu, but that was slow.
Nowadays you have KVM (kvm.sourceforge.net, and now with the default vanilla kernel 2.6.20), which is a kernel-level item for using the Linux kernel as a hypervisor. What that means is that you can use it to make a hacked version of Qemu very fast. Unfortunately those of you with slightly older hardware that doesn't support Intel's VT or AMD's SVM features can't use it.
So that brings me to the first thing, which is Kqemu.
Kqemu is a kernel module used for accelerating Qemu. Unfortunately it has been propriatory for a long time, which limits it's usefullness. However now the programmer has decided to GPL Kqemu.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/index.html
This should allow userland applications to be executed directly in userspace and kernels of your system will run with limited emulation. (the problem with x86 is that kernels running in protected memory space cannot normally be run directly in userspace, they require virtualization to similate being ran in kernelspace which occurs stiff penalties for performance traditionally). This will give you a nice performance boost over regular Qemu and make it usefull for most desktop applications if your unable to run KVM.
Also Qemu generally supports using Kqemu out of the box. So it's not very difficult to setup. It's a kernel module compile, which if your new to Linux isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's not realy that difficult either.
The second part is 'coherance'. That is you run Windows applications as if they were native applications on your Linux desktop. That is they show up as individual Windows that you can switch between and all sorts of fun stuff. It's done using a trick with rdesktop and Windows XP Pro's remote desktop support.
Also Qemu has support for sharing a folder on your Linux system (via Samba) as a drive for your windows system. This will make file handling much more simplier between the two systems.
Screenshots and howtos for Ubuntu users are aviable at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo
And before anybody asks:
Nope, this is not usefull for any game requiring 3d acceleration. It's unaccelerated only.
I some people find this usefull.
