Winux (linux.exe)

Winux is a Linux® environment for Windows^TM. (Well, it's some suckless thing.)

I'm tired of VMs, because they are really slow. I'm also stuck on Windows and can't get those Unix programs. Well, I got sick of it and made this Linux backwards compatibility frontend for Windows.

Requirements

You need Windows 10 or Windows 11 to use Winux as WSL only appears in these versions of Windows. Please note that Winux is only tested on Windows 11, but should work on Windows 10 as well.

To setup WSL, if you have one of these versions, run wsl --install --distribution <initial distro name>. To see a list of distro names, run wsl --list --online.

Install

An easy way to install Winux is to use PowerShell, which does not require any additional software:

Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://github.com/Tyler887/winux/raw/main/install.ps1')

Another way is to use CPPM or add the Scoop bucket:

powershell -c "Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://get.scoop.sh')"
scoop install git
scoop bucket add winux https://github.com/Tyler887/winux-scoop.git
scoop install winux/winux

You can uninstall Winux as well by opening uninstall-winux.ps1 or upgrade it by opening update-winux.ps1.

If Winux is installed, it can be registered as a dotnet command:

Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://github.com/Tyler887/winux/raw/main/dotnetRegister.ps1')

Compile from source

It's easy to compile the source code as a Windows binary, like this (in powershell/pwsh):

python -m pip install pyinstaller # Install pyinstaller from Package Index
python -m pip install colorama questionary # Winux depends on both of these modules
git clone https://github.com/Tyler887/winux.git
Set-Location winux
pyinstaller winux.py --console --onefile #--noupx # Uncomment the --noupx if you don't have UPX

⚠️ Misidentification of being a Win32 trojan

Winux might be detected as a virus, called Wactac (Trojan:Win32/Wactac.B!ml). If this appears in Windows Security, then uninstall Winux, and try installing it again. If you still find the same issue, install using Scoop.

Run without installing

To run Winux without installing it (also called a "live run"), run this in PowerShell:

Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://github.com/Tyler887/winux/raw/main/live.ps1')

This downloads and runs the code of Winux using CPython.

Live run should be used to prevent Windows Security from detecting Winux as a virus. CPython (the reference Python implementation) must be installed in order to preform a live run. (Note that if you do not have Python, python will take you to the Python 3.9 download page on MS Store.)

Python 2 support

No. Over 1k of Python software dropped support for Python 2. Winux is written in Python 3, long since Python 2 was discontinued. Pull requests adding Python 2 support will be closed and won't be merged.

RISK WARRANTY

Use Winux at your own risk. I make no warranty for usage of the frontend. Do not use this program unless you understand the risks of using it.