Ideas for first class support for Windows applications

[michaelshmitty]

What do you need?

(Some) Windows applications work quite well once you install Wine (menu -> install -> package -> wine).
.exe files are automatically associated with Wine and execute when you double click them in the file browser. I did have to fiddle with winecfg and scale the DPI under the Graphics tab way up to make applications readable, but this may be display hardware dependent.

User swork1 over on X asked about Sierra Chart (https://www.sierrachart.com/) and if the experience of running Windows apps in Omarchy can be improved.

I don't know if there is enough demand for having a better out of the box Windows applications experience, but I promised to look into it and here are some ideas:

• Have Wine installed with a default Omarchy installation
• If possible, pre-generate configuration in ~/.wine
• Have a simple (Gum?) TUI that allows you to add installed windows applications (in ~/.wine/drive_c/...) to the app launcher, similar to how web apps are added.

If enough demand, I or someone else may look into this.

[LucaNerlich]

I dont agree with adding "random" software / features which most? of the target audience probably do not need. I feel like this might just as well work great as a short written guide in a wiki of sorts.

[michaelshmitty]

I dont agree with adding "random" software / features ...

Do you mean Wine?

[LucaNerlich]

For example, yes.

[michaelshmitty]

I agree, this may not be something the target audience needs.

What I liked was that by just installing the wine package from the standard repository, any Windows executable double clicked on in the file manager would run as opposed to doing nothing or showing an error message.

Maybe some info in this issue comes up in future searches. I checked before submitting and didn't find anything. I'm totally ok with maintainers closing this as wontfix.

[michaelshmitty]

What I liked was that by just installing the wine package from the standard repository, any Windows executable double clicked on in the file manager would run as opposed to doing nothing or showing an error message.

And this may be an Arch thing because I remember not having this out of the box on other distros and I just tried it in Linux Mint, installing wine and double clicking a Windows executable. It opens the archive manager instead and does not execute the binary. Another win for Omarchy!

[ryanrhughes]

@michaelshmitty Would you be able to share some info about how you accomplished this and / or give Fusion 360 a shot in this setup? That's an app I know a lot of 3D printing folks use and would be nice to have running over here.

[michaelshmitty]

@ryanrhughes I had trouble getting de Windows version of Fusion. From Linux the download from the website just doesn't start and on macOS it gets me the mac version.
I'll try again later when I get to a Windows machine at home.

In the mean time I found this though: https://github.com/Thermionix/fusion360 May be of interest?

[michaelshmitty]

@ryanrhughes related: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fusion360/comments/162to7t/whats_the_current_state_of_fusion_360_on_linux/

[michaelshmitty]

@ryanrhughes
I have downloaded the Fusion Client Downloader.exe installer on a Windows machine and copied it over to my Omarchy Linux machine.
Windows applications start out of the box in Omarchy as long as you've installed the wine package. This is why I was suggesting having wine installed by default because it's a gateway to potentially run many Windows programs out of the box.

Now whether these apps actually run is very particular to each individual app! Fusion 360 for example seems to run with Wine, according to the snap package developer (https://github.com/Thermionix/fusion360), but as you can see it's a complicated program. It seems to rely on Microsoft Edge WebView and requires a bunch of pre and post hooks and registry key additions.
Not all Windows software has this problem. PuTTY for example is a single binary and I got that running as a proof of concept. Of course a Windows SSH client on Linux is a silly example and not very useful.

Perhaps what can be taken away from this is the consideration to have wine installed by default to increase the chance for people to get lucky in their attempt to run a Windows application. And secondly, we can in the future perhaps have issues opened on a per-app basis for Windows. This allows us to identify Windows applications (if any!) that are truly requested by many users and for which there are no alternatives. And address the specific problems that prevent them from working.
I'm done with this issue for now. Running Windows applications (except for the Sims) is no necessity for me personally.

[sspaeti]

Not wine, but full-blown Windows in a Docker image: #1333. Currently, I run it in full-screen mode on Windows and use all apps from there, but with WinApps, it seems you can also run individual apps separately. However, upon a quick glance, it appears to use the same principle of running Windows in Docker containers as the above PR. So, it might not be too big a step for what you need here.

[hffmnn]

@sspaeti Without testing it, WinBoat might also be an alternative based on a similar approach and providing an Electron-based GUI.

[michaelshmitty]

@sspaeti Without testing it, WinBoat might also be an alternative based on a similar approach and providing an Electron-based GUI.

I saw a YT video on this recently. Looks very interesting. I wonder how "laggy" the interactions through RDP feel, though.

[sspaeti]

@sspaeti Without testing it, WinBoat might also be an alternative based on a similar approach and providing an Electron-based GUI.

I saw a YT video on this recently. Looks very interesting. I wonder how "laggy" the interactions through RDP feel, though.

Laggy? It's the opposite IMO. The VNC through the web browser feels very non-native and "slowish". However, the RDP feels like I'm running native apps on my Linux. Works like a charm. Although I found that rdesktop is not working as well as FreeRDP, that's why I switched to it. Here's the update and the video linked that you might have seen #1333 (comment)

Here's a short (older) video demo: https://x.com/sspaeti/status/1961826772682490032