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When people are asked why they haven’t tried out Linux yet, quite often you hear arguments like: “I don’t want to install another disk drive”, “I don’t want to mess with my Windows partition”, etc. To a certain extent those are valid arguments, especially if you are scared messing with your computers hardware or some of the more geeky aspects of the software environment.

While there was always the possibility to “get your feet wet” using virtualization software like VMWare, where the software simulates a virtual machine that is completely independent from the host operating system (think “computer inside a computer”), now there’s an even easier method.

Let me introduce andLinux. andLinux is based on the work that went into the “Cooperative Linux” project. Instead of relying on virtualization technologies, coLinux managed to compile the Linux kernel in a way that allows it to run side-by-side with the host OS. No virtualization required, no messing with your disk layout, no additional software required. andLinux installs just like any other Windows application. All you need is a nice chunk of disk space. Unlike coLinux, andLinux deals with some of the scary parts of the coLinux configuration. It will automatically configure network connections correctly and even share your windows filesystem with the Linux portion. The later allows you to access all your windows files from Linux.

I tried the KDE-version of andLinux the other day and just wanted to write a bit about my experience.

After downloading some 665MB I ended up with a single installer executable.

The installation process was painless and I quickly answered the few questions that came up during the installation: you tell it where to install it, you tell it how much memory you want to dedicate to your Linux “computer”, if and how you want to share the windows filesystem (I picked the easier coFS option) and off you go.
During the installation a new network driver was copied to the system (TAP-Win32), which required a restart once the installation completed. The network driver allows communication between the Windows OS and Linux OS as if those systems resided on a different network and were connected via Ethernet-cables.

The installer left three desktop shortcuts on the desktop and two quickstart icons in the taskbar (pictured above, I dragged the two items from the taskbar [right-most] on the desktop).

After the restart I also found a new item in my system tray (pictured on the right). Those items in the systray-menu allow you to execute a bunch of the most often used applications directly from there. Once andLinux is running on your system, you right-click on the tray-icon, select the application and it will be run under Linux.

So I finally went ahead and started andLinux via the “Start andLinux” shortcut on the desktop. A new console window (labelled “andServer (CoLinux)”) opened and I saw messages scrolling by that documented the startup process (you’ll see that console window further down in this post).

From the startup messages you can see that I opted to reserve up to 384MB of my memory for andLinux. The documentation suggests that you should not use less than 256MB, however under certain circumstances you might even get away with 128MB (expect the performance to become sluggish at that value).

Linux’ root file system is in a single file called “base.drv”. Extra swap space is created in a separate file called “swap.drv”. During the startup process andLinux will attach to those files and treat the single file like a “disk”.

As you can see from the startup messages, andLinux also configures two network adapters (eth0 and eth1). The first one is used to “bridge” Linux networking with your real network adapter on Windows - this allows Linux to reach the Internet. The second one is used as a communication device between Windows and Linux and that’s the place where the above mentioned TAP-Win32 driver comes into play.

With the andLinux server running I clicked on the “KHomeFolder” shortcut and within a second I had KDE’s Konqueror window with root’s home folder on my screen.

I tried a number of other applications and the performance was very nice. Overall the applications felt very responsive and I did not get the impression that those were not native Windows applications.

Behind the scenes a special version of the X11-server, Xming is being used to accomplish that. Xming is launched when the andLinux server starts up. It creates an X11-screen that coexists with the Windows desktop. There’s no switching between virtual screens, everything looks like it’s part of your standard Windows installation.

After starting and closing a number of applications, I was curious what Linux’ memory consumption looked like. To my surprise I found the following:

I still had 280MB (from the total of 384MB) physical memory available - nice!

Network connectivity worked right after the start. Where I previously had to tweak/configure settings in coLinux, andLinux made that portion a snap and configured everything for you.

Internet access from Linux applications worked as expected and my Windows file-system was automatically mounted (you can see it above in the Konquerer screenshot).

All in all a more than pleasant experience.

I guess there’s no more excuse now not to give Linux a try. The only thing that makes you scratch your head: why would you want to run a more stable operating system under a less stable one? But, I guess, that’ll be subject of another post.