Winapps Support for Mac

[hykelvinlee42]

Hi there, if I understand the underlying mechanism correctly, Winapps utilizes virtual machines (e.g. docker) and freerdp, which both have support on MacOS. In theory, would the Winapps support running applications like Solidworks on MacOS?

[oskardotglobal]

Well, technically it is possible, there is a POC on the legacy-macos branch

[oskardotglobal]

However, especially Solidworks is something that would run really poorly in a VM

[hykelvinlee42]

Thanks, I'm not planning to use Solidworks in particular. It's just the first Windows only application that came to my mind.

[KernelGhost]

It is technically possible to add macOS support through utmctl in a way similar to how libvirt is currently utilised. I can explore this on my M1 MacBook Pro, but I can’t commit to providing a solution as stability may be an issue. I’ll try to revisit this when I have more time in the coming months.

[iMonZ]

mit to providing a solution as stability may be an issue. I’ll try to revisit this when I have more time in the coming months.

Shouldn't docker just work fine for now?
I think the Shell or UX integration would be more important than the actual virtualization of Windows.
The arm version of Windows would work fine as well for now.

@KernelGhost How did you get your demo running on the screenshot?

[KernelGhost]

@iMonZ I ran the Windows VM inside UTM with TCP and UDP traffic forwarded to the host on port 3389. FreeRDP was installed via Homebrew. While it generally worked, dragging windows was unreliable (only window snapping seemed to function properly). The setup also felt a bit fragile as FreeRDP would occasionally crash.

[iMonZ]

@iMonZ I ran the Windows VM inside UTM with TCP and UDP traffic forwarded to the host on port 3389. FreeRDP was installed via Homebrew. While it generally worked, dragging windows was unreliable (only window snapping seemed to function properly). The setup also felt a bit fragile as FreeRDP would occasionally crash.

I see that you use XQuarz. Is there maybe another, better alternative?

[KernelGhost]

@iMonZ XQuartz is a dependency of FreeRDP on macOS, so I am not aware of an alternative.

[iMonZ]

@iMonZ XQuartz is a dependency of FreeRDP on macOS, so I am not aware of an alternative.

I found this discussion:
FreeRDP/FreeRDP#8578

That this: https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP/tree/master/client/Mac
Should be the native freerdp variant without the need of an X Server
Also there would be sdl-freerdp

Would it be possible to integrate those into WinApps?