Winapps in Bazzite Portal

dannymate · June 8, 2024, 7:59pm

Repo: GitHub - winapps-org/winapps: The winapps main project, forked from https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps/

winapps allows Windows applications, running in a Windows VM, to be seamlessly integrated into Linux as if they were running natively.

I’m currently talking to a fair few people who are annoyed about the recent Windows debacle. One thing that is stopping them from switching from Windows is Microsoft Office & Adobe support.

winapps is relatively complicated to set up and I feel it would fit Ublue/Bazzite to simplify the install process and remove that barrier to entry. I think it could convince a lot more people to give Linux a try, knowing they have that crutch.

I don’t imagine it’s particularly easy considering the steps but there’s no harm in asking. If someone more knowledgeable than myself can take a look and deem if it’s possible/wanted, I don’t mind putting in the effort getting it the rest of the way. (Or creating a Github issue)

Greg · June 8, 2024, 8:14pm

+1 on the MS Office install

dannymate · August 13, 2024, 7:16pm

Guide to getting Winapps working on Bazzite

I did this in Bazzite with KDE. I wouldn’t consider myself knowledgeable about WinApps and how it functions. So feel free to ask questions but don’t expect me to be able to answer confidently. I just wanted to catalogue how I went about installing it, to make it easier for others, and hopefully to look at automating it.

I tried to do this a month or so ago but I was having problems luckily these seem to have resolved themselves with updates and pulling the latest changes from WinApps.

Thanks to “ddjivan” for letting me know they’d gotten it working and helping me out a bit.

I tried my best but you may still encounter issues. Let me know if you do and I’ll update the guide. Make sure you’re on Bazzite 40 or above to get FreeRDP3

Open a terminal (We’ll call this Terminal A):

We need to install 3 packages, I’ll provide options for each (If you go the rpm-ostree route feel to combine them together to speed things up):

podman-compose:
pip install podman-compose
rpm-ostree install --apply-live podman-compose
dialog
brew install dialog
rpm-ostree install --apply-live dialog
netcat
rpm-ostree install --apply-live nmap-ncat

Notes:

From a previous attempt at using Brew entirely. If you want to go that route you can see there’s an extra step at the bottom comment you need to do.
There’s also iproute & libnotify but I haven’t encountered issues without having them installed so I’m unsure if installing is required
Bazzite has FreeRDP installed already (at least it was for me). You can double check in terminal with xfreerdp +version and make sure it’s above 3.0.0. If it’s not found then install it with:
rpm-ostree install --apply-live freerdp

git clone --recurse-submodules --remote-submodules https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps.git && cd winapps

Open another terminal tab/window (Terminal B):

We need to create a “winapps config” file to do that we’ll create a root folder:
mkdir ~/.config/winapps/

Then create a winapps.conf using the template:
nano ~/.config/winapps/winapps.conf

Some changes that need to be made are:

Set RDP_USER and RDP_PASS to what you want your Windows user account login to be.
Set WAFLAVOR="podman".

Back in Terminal A:

Now we need to modify the compose.yaml file:

Make sure to set USERNAME & PASSWORD to match what you put in your winapps.conf config’s RDP_USER & RDP_PASS respectively.
Change image to: docker.io/dockurr/windows. Prevents issues with Podman and default repo.
By default Tiny11 direct downloads from Archive.org… very slowly. I recommend downloading via torrent and placing the ISO into the winapps folder under isos/tiny11 23H2 x64.iso. I then added - ./isos/tiny11 23H2 x64.iso:/custom.iso as a volume.
From there follow the steps under the “Installing Windows” heading. (You can skip the cd winapps bit as you should already be in there)

From here you can install Office or whatever Windows applications you want from your browser. When you’re ready from “Terminal A” run:
./installer.sh

You’ll get a nice terminal interface which you should be able to figure out from here. Don’t worry about messing anything up, the “Uninstall” option removes everything allowing you to go through the “Install” again if need be.

Your applications should now be in your application menu and can be opened from there.

Notes:

If you want to scrap your Windows container, after stopping it you can:
podman rm WinApps
podman volume rm winapps_data -F
There’s more information to be found at the docker/podman guide and under the readme’s Installation header.
Don’t worry about booting it on startup. When starting a Windows app it should automatically attempt to boot the container for you though you may have to give it a second (or even a second attempt).

Here’s my files compose.yaml and winapps.conf:
Remember to comment out the oem and custom.iso lines when you get to that step.

compose.yaml

# For documentation, FAQ, additional configuration options and technical help, visit: https://github.com/dockur/windows

name: "winapps" # Docker Compose Project Name.
volumes:
  # Create Volume 'data'.
  # Located @ '/var/lib/docker/volumes/winapps_data/_data' (Docker).
  # Located @ '/var/lib/containers/storage/volumes/winapps_data/_data' or '~/.local/share/containers/storage/volumes/winapps_data/_data' (Podman).
  data:
services:
  windows:
    image: docker.io/dockurr/windows # https://hub.docker.com/r/dockurr/windows
    container_name: WinApps # Created Docker VM Name.
    environment:
      # Version of Windows to configure. For valid options, visit:
      # https://github.com/dockur/windows?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do-i-select-the-windows-version
      # https://github.com/dockur/windows?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do-i-install-a-custom-image
      VERSION: "tiny11"
      RAM_SIZE: "4G" # RAM allocated to the Windows VM.
      CPU_CORES: "4" # CPU cores allocated to the Windows VM.
      DISK_SIZE: "64G" # Size of the primary hard disk.
      #DISK2_SIZE: "32G" # Uncomment to add an additional hard disk to the Windows VM. Ensure it is mounted as a volume below.
      USERNAME: "Danny" # Uncomment to set a custom Windows username. The default is 'Docker'.
      PASSWORD: "MyPassword" # Uncomment to set a password for the Windows user. There is no default password.
      HOME: "${HOME}" # Set path to Linux user home folder.
    privileged: true # Grant the Windows VM extended privileges.
    ports:
      - 8006:8006 # Map '8006' on Linux host to '8006' on Windows VM --> For VNC Web Interface @ http://127.0.0.1:8006.
      - 3389:3389/tcp # Map '3389' on Linux host to '3389' on Windows VM --> For Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
      - 3389:3389/udp # Map '3389' on Linux host to '3389' on Windows VM --> For Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
    stop_grace_period: 120s # Wait 120 seconds before sending SIGTERM when attempting to shut down the Windows VM.
    restart: on-failure # Restart the Windows VM if the exit code indicates an error.
    volumes:
      - data:/storage # Mount volume 'data' to use as Windows 'C:' drive.
      - ${HOME}:/shared # Mount Linux user home directory @ '\\host.lan\Data'.
      #- /path/to/second/hard/disk:/storage2 # Uncomment to mount the second hard disk within the Windows VM. Ensure 'DISK2_SIZE' is specified above.
      - ./isos/tiny11 23H2 x64.iso:/custom.iso
      - ./oem:/oem # Enables automatic post-install execution of 'oem/install.bat', applying Windows registry modifications contained within 'oem/RDPApps.reg'.
      #- /path/to/windows/install/media.iso:/custom.iso # Uncomment to use a custom Windows ISO. If specified, 'VERSION' (e.g. 'tiny11') will be ignored.
    devices:
      - /dev/kvm # Enable KVM.
      #- /dev/sdX:/disk1 # Uncomment to mount a disk directly within the Windows VM (Note: 'disk1' will be mounted as the main drive).
      #- /dev/sdY:/disk2 # Uncomment to mount a disk directly within the Windows VM (Note: 'disk2' and higher will be mounted as secondary drives).

winapps.conf

##################################
#   WINAPPS CONFIGURATION FILE   #
##################################

# INSTRUCTIONS
# - Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.
# - Empty lines are ignored.
# - Lines starting with '#' are ignored.
# - All characters following a '#' are ignored.

# [WINDOWS USERNAME]
RDP_USER="Danny"

# [WINDOWS PASSWORD]
RDP_PASS="MyPassword"

# [WINDOWS DOMAIN]
# DEFAULT VALUE: '' (BLANK)
#RDP_DOMAIN=""

# [WINDOWS IPV4 ADDRESS]
# NOTES:
# - If using 'libvirt', 'RDP_IP' will be determined by WinApps at runtime if left unspecified.
# DEFAULT VALUE:
# - 'docker': '127.0.0.1'
# - 'podman': '127.0.0.1'
# - 'libvirt': '' (BLANK)
#RDP_IP=""

# [WINAPPS BACKEND]
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'docker'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'docker'
# - 'podman'
# - 'libvirt'
# - 'manual'
WAFLAVOR="podman"

# [DISPLAY SCALING FACTOR]
# NOTES:
# - If an unsupported value is specified, a warning will be displayed.
# - If an unsupported value is specified, WinApps will use the closest supported value.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '100'
# VALID VALUES:
# - '100'
# - '140'
# - '180'
RDP_SCALE="100"

# [ADDITIONAL FREERDP FLAGS & ARGUMENTS]
# DEFAULT VALUE: '' (BLANK)
# VALID VALUES: See https://github.com/awakecoding/FreeRDP-Manuals/blob/88c0158c896565214e6b145f67e95efe8dee883f/User/FreeRDP-User-Manual.markdown
RDP_FLAGS=""

# [MULTIPLE MONITORS]
# NOTES:
# - If enabled, a FreeRDP bug *might* produce a black screen.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'false'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'true'
# - 'false'
MULTIMON="false"

# [DEBUG WINAPPS]
# NOTES:
# - Creates and appends to ~/.local/share/winapps/winapps.log when running WinApps.
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'true'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'true'
# - 'false'
DEBUG="true"

# [AUTOMATICALLY PAUSE WINDOWS]
# NOTES:
# - This is currently INCOMPATIBLE with 'docker' and 'manual'.
# - See https://github.com/dockur/windows/issues/674
# DEFAULT VALUE: 'off'
# VALID VALUES:
# - 'on'
# - 'off'
AUTOPAUSE="off"

# [AUTOMATICALLY PAUSE WINDOWS TIMEOUT]
# NOTES:
# - This setting determines the duration of inactivity to tolerate before Windows is automatically paused.
# - This setting is ignored if 'AUTOPAUSE' is set to 'off'.
# - The value must be specified in seconds (to the nearest 10 seconds e.g., '30', '40', '50', etc.).
# - For RemoteApp RDP sessions, there is a mandatory 20-second delay, so the minimum value that can be specified here is '20'.
# - Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/terminal-services-remoteapp-8482-session-termination-logic/ba-p/246566
# DEFAULT VALUE: '300'
# VALID VALUES: >=20
AUTOPAUSE_TIME="300"

# [FREERDP COMMAND]
# NOTES:
# - WinApps will attempt to automatically detect the correct command to use for your system.
# DEFAULT VALUE: '' (BLANK)
# VALID VALUES: The command required to run FreeRDPv3 on your system (e.g., 'xfreerdp', 'xfreerdp3', etc.).
#FREERDP_COMMAND=""

system · August 14, 2024, 7:16pm

This topic was automatically closed 24 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

Topic		Replies	Views
Clean installation guide for GPD Win 4 Bazzite	19	1552	July 17, 2024
Bazzite Portal not initiating Bazzite	4	97	November 19, 2024
Is it possible to uninstall the builtin Steam & Lutris apps? Bazzite	8	1696	August 17, 2024
Confused between bazzite and bluefin General developer-experience	11	2723	March 5, 2024
Asked for feedback on what to bake into Bazzite and Bluefin Contributing	12	516	February 26, 2024

Winapps in Bazzite Portal

Related topics