There have been several requests for information on how to run coLinux (including by myself), and it seemed useful to me to write a little guide.
It's a work in progress, as still haven't gotten everything running ;-)

1. Get the necessary files (www.colinux.org ==> go to downloads).

2. Run the installer (just go through the installation, and select the Debian or the Gentoo file). I installed everything to c:\coLinux , and will refer to it as if you do it the same way.

3. Decompress the Debian or Gentoo image. (It'll look something like gentoo-i586-ext3-2g-deluxe or Debian-3.0r0.ext3.1gb .) You can use WinRAR for this.

4. Decompress vmlinux-modules (use WinRAR again).

5. Open default.colinux.xml in Notepad.

You'll see several parts that need to be adapted.

My file looks like this:



This part links to the image file (in this case the Debian file). It needs to point to the correct directory, so make sure not to make any mistakes!


This part points to the swap file. A swap file is optional.
If you don't want to use it, change "true" to "false".
If you do want to use a swap-file, download one from this location and uncompress it (and make sure the directory is displayed correctly in default.colinux.xml!).


This is the last important part of the file. Don't use too much of the memory, or your computer can slow down. Don't use too little, or Linux won't run well. 64 Mb should do well, if you're not running anything like KDE or Gnome.

Save default.colinux.xml and close it.

6. In the Windows Start Menu, search for the 'File Prompt' (good old DOS), and start it.
Type
You are now in the correct directory.

7. Type
This will start the colinux-daemon.exe file, using the defaults chosen in default.colinux.xml.

8. You're running Linux in Windows! Next part: going graphical!

So, how does my explanation look?

edit 1: changed part 7

Looks pretty darn good!

Let me move this to the HOWTO & FAQ section.

* thread moved *

yes ... seriously... darn good... Mathais... can u add some screenshots to make it more appetising for me ... i am starting to dig this concept slowly.

Thanks, guys

Well, I'm not going to add screenshots yet. Maybe once I get the GUI working (might take me a little longer).

I didn't post this thread in the FAQ section, since it seemed unfinished to me.
But then again, you CAN use Linux already

Don't get hung up on the word "completed" in the title of the section. This is Open Source, and everything is constantly fixed and improved by the community.

The "completed" was added to prevent people from posting new general questions in here, like "How do I do xxxxx in Slackware?".

This the right place to ask for help?

I've installed it, with Gentoo, but how do I get it so I can access the internet, do I need to bridge the connections in XP?

I'm still working on that ;-)

I've tried several methods already, but I can't figure it out
Maybe take a look at this page: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=1...ghlight=colinux

Hmm...

It always seems to want to not bring eth0 up >_<

Edit: right, I can get eth0 up, but can't ping anything

Well, if you get it running, can you post how you did it?

I'd help you, but I can't figure it out either

Yeah... if I can get it running, I'll tell you

I can only get eth0 up my assigning it a statis IP address, otherwise it borks while trying to get one by DHCP

sweet i was just about to post about problems i was having. this helped me fix the problem. their site sucks when it comes to explaining setup.

i installed it and have it running, but i cant log on...how do i set up logons?

i figured it out...its username:root & p/w:root

tried this awhile ago. could never get it to work.

Damn right mark! That coLinux thing sounds pretty cool, maybe a part on setting up Internet with the host (Windows)?

when it asks to enter login and pass i can enter login but when i get to pass, it just wont let me type

You do realize that there is no onscreen indicator as you type in the password, right? No characters, no asterisks, no nothing.

yep just found out, sorry i am n00b to linux.. anywho here is my problem.. after i enter the login info.. it just sits there it does nothing.. is there somthing i have to type i have tried:

startx
kde
go
start

but it says "command not found"

Well, what have you installed? You can only run what you've installed on it

ok here is what i did,

i downloaded it, i picked Gentoo, i then downloaded the images needed

then i went to the directory, opened the files that need extracting with winrar, extracted them to the colinux folder and the edited the xml file:



then i simply typed in dos: colinux-daemon.exe -c default.colinux.xml

then it asked for the login and pass typed that in.. and now i am sitting here waiting

Now you have the base system. You have to specifically install stuff on it that you want. Gentoo is a somewhat advanced distro - it doesn't come with much more than the bare essentials to get the OS running by default, and then you go from there. If you want a pretty gui like kde or gnome, you'll have to install them yourself. I've never used colinux, nor did I read the docs, but you might be able to use "emerge sync" if you have network connectivity, and if that works then just start emerging whatever you want to run on it

Might be a dumb question, but where do I uncompress it to? I've got it running, but it gives me lots of errors due to missing modules and module cache.

I got like 2 errors about symlinks or something when i extracted vmlinux-modules but it still worked.

I tried installing xorg and gnome with apt-get but it just dies when it tries to startx

please teach me to install this, as i said i am still a n00b

Try
user: root
pass: root

yep done but after that it just sits there looking at me like

Does it just freeze or you get any errors?
You do realize that all you will get is a command line. This is the most basic core of a linux install. It's like having DOS again.

^ yes exactly what i mean.. so what do i have to do now?

any commands?
any buttons

Wait until he puts up the guide for kde/gnome..

^ i see, thanks

*waits*

*waiting*

since i am waiting may i ask if there is any other software that emulates Linux?

*joins the waiting line

when the gui tutorial is here, then i'll do the other stuff... so can people post some screenshots? ...yea sounds dumb but i just want to see how it looks like

http://www.colinux.org/?section=screenshots
Scroll down.

any news on gettting a tutorial for Gentoo?.... still waiting here

Oh, are you guys waiting for me?
I'm afraid it's been quite a while since I've worked on this. I didn't carry on with it, as I just installed Linux on a separate partition. Sorry, folks

VMWare emulates Linux fine, but it costs $$$.

The one problem is that their guides suck. I have tried everything to connect it to the internet and can't seem to do it. I set up the windows TAP thing. Changed the name in the XML to match it. I have tried bridgeing the connections... I have tried everything they suggest but I can't get it running. Is there anyone that has had success running this behind a router?

anyone get this error

What does it say in the other console window?

That would close the console window. Making it just black.

Ok. I have made a break though in getting internet on this. Go to network connections and select your real connection and the colinux tap. Then right click and hit bridge connections. Now in your default.colinux.xml edit the line

Or something like that to

Now boot up colinux and type
editor /etc/network/interfaces
change it so it says

Now save it (hit ctrl+x then y and then enter) and now type

and then

Now for some reason with this setup I was not able to be connected to trillian or xfire. Yet colinux worked fine. It connected and started downloading stuff...

[Edit] forgot something [/edit]

oompa didn't work for me.
i'll stick with vmware

It worked for me for about 30 minutes then didn't want to. :-\. I have now been useing vmware with ubuntu. And now I am going to go partition my extra hard drive for linux.

coLinux Getting Started Guide

http://wiki.colinux.org/cgi-bin/GettingStartedLong

So far, following that guide located at the url above, I have found coLinux to be very easy...

I have been running (and do run) SuSE 9.3 and Windows XP in a dual boot scenario. But I want to be able to use (the main reason for trying this out) KDevelop in windows. This is the best free IDE I have come across, and I have not found a reasonable replacement in Windows. I dont want to reboot and run SuSE every time I want to do a little development when i'm in windows. I tried cygwin/X, but (i think) the version of KDevelop (3.0.0 beta) i came up with was incompatible with the brand new KDE 3.4 i got. it required a bit of playing with the directory structure to get it to run, but it could not load the language plugins of kdevelop.

Now I am trying coLinux, running Debian. As I am writing this, I am still busy downloading all of the kdebase dependancies. Everything has gone very well for me so far, especially considering this is my first real experiance of Debian. (I got the Debian 3r4 cds, but didn't much like it... But it doesn't seem too bad now. Quite like it, in a way). If all of this works, I will have to investigate SuSE and coLinux. Failing that, Mandriva.
But so far, so good. Only, my connection speed is currently only 64kbps, as opposed to my usual 1mbps, so the downloading of packages with apt-get is taking very long...

I dont have anywhere to host the screenshot, so i cannot post it here...

and its only a single console window, busy with an apt-get install of kdebase. Not much to see... it might be more impressive if i have a shot of the logon prompt, where you get dumped after a fresh Debian install (coLinux or otherwise)

I found a place to stick my screenshot.. a little attachment box.

[attachmentid=135110]

Are you behind a router?

I am behind a router, which makes configuring networking very easy. I bridged my normal, physical adapter and the TAP adapter, calling the TAP Adapter coLinuxNET, and put that name in the colinux.xml config file



Windows does seem to not realise that its connected tho, but its all working perfectly. I have a link to the internet, but windows tells me that the coLinuxNet adapter has no connection. Oh well, i'll ignore that, seeing as it does actually work.

I also now have a minimal KDE system running, with the display exported through a VNC server. So, using RealVNC Client in windows, I can connect to 192.168.0.40:1 as my graphical display.

This configuration (coLinux + VNC) seems to operate a lot better than Cygwin/X, and also seems to use fewer resources.

After many hours of waiting for KDevelop3 and its dependencies to download, here is the final result.

A vncserver running in coLinux, exporting a display resolution 1152x808 (My windows Res is 1152x864) This resolution makes the windows taskbar still visible below the VNC Viewer window, but also maximizes the size of the KDE desktop (I maximize the VNC Viewer Window, and with any larger vncserver geometry, i have scroll bars.) The nice thing about runnning the slightly lowered resolution (1152x808) is that i still have full, easy access to my windows taskbar, and anything i need to do in there. I can run a full screen Viewer window, with the vncserver -geometry set to 1152x768, but that makes a little more difficult to switch between KDE and Windows.

Oh, I had to manually fix a couple of dependecies (for building C++ projects with kdevelop). apt-get install libtool; apt-get install g++

without libtool, i got some problems trying to run automake and autoconf etc. got libtool, then in configure, I got told that my c++ compiler could not create executable files. After a quick Google, I found that I should check if g++ was installed correctly (or at all). It was not, so i got it, which fixed everything.

[attachmentid=135242]

That's extremely weird. When I bridge my connections neither works....