[HOWTO] coLinux - running Linux in Windows

By Mathiasdm
in HOW TO & FAQ Guides

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Oompa

Posted
Posted

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?

Mentor

Oompa

Posted
Posted (edited)

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 

<network index="0" type="tap" name="colinux tap"/>

Or something like that to

<network index="0" type="bridged" name="NAME_OF_COLINUX_TAP"/>

Now boot up colinux and type

editor /etc/network/interfaces

change it so it says

iface eth0 inet dhcp

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

ifdown eth0

and then

ifup eth0

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 :p [/edit]

Edited by Oompa
  • 2 weeks later...
Neowinian

azriphale

Posted
Posted

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.

post-121054-1122746259_thumb.jpg

Neowinian

azriphale

Posted
Posted

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

<network index="0" type="tap" name="coLinuxNet" />

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.

Neowinian

azriphale

Posted
Posted

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.

post-121054-1122838600_thumb.jpg

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