
Show HN: LoWe – Extending the functionality of Ubuntu running on Windows 10 - kpocza
https://github.com/kpocza/LoWe
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vmorgulis
> LoWe creates the missing device files (as regular files) under /dev to let
> them to be opened by the program and have a file descriptor. Later on it
> intercepts Linux kernel system calls (syscalls) in user mode via ptrace
> (like strace). When LoWe thinks that she is responsible to handle given
> syscalls (ioctl, read, write, mmap, etc.) of particular devices identified
> by file descriptors then it provides her own responses to the syscalls
> instead of going down to the Windows kernel that has no support for those
> functions.

Simple and neat idea.

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kpocza
Thank you.

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kpocza
I know that there is room for improvement.

What do you think, where should I improve LoWe first? Should I add more apps,
more devices, or make it easier to use?

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marcoperaza
Question for the author: in terms of running X apps, what's the advantage of
this over using a third-party x server, like VcXSrv?

Using VcXSrv and just two tweaks (setting DISPLAY to :0 and setting dbus to
not use UNIX sockets), I've gotten gnome-terminal, gvim, and Plank dock
working perfectly. Firefox, Nautilus file explorer, and various Gnome programs
seem to work fine too.

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kpocza
Most probably to employ a third-party X server is more robust at the moment.

However in this case we can achieve the same effect with the Ubuntu bits of
the X server. It's true that here we require other tweaks but this is a bigger
step towards letting Ubuntu on Windows on its own to run X apps.

LoWe provides a generic approach and idea that can be applied in a specific
way to other functionalities. Eg. it's possible to play music (PCM) by
"emulating" some ALSA devices.

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Eridrus
This is cool, though I use WSL and haven't really run into a situation where I
actually want to run any GUI software from WSL.

I'm curious if there was an actual need that drove this.

~~~
kpocza
Originally there was no actual need, I was just curious about the technology,
the limits and I wanted to push these limitations.

But: Later I realized that there is a need for this. With apt, it's much
easier to install and update (GUI) apps than with the Windows installer, so
the need has grown from nothing to a real-world requirement. Moreover it
happened several times that I was looking for some software and there were
many alternatives for Linux but nothing valuable for Windows. LoWe will help
in these situations, as well.

