By Liam Proven
Publication Date: 2026-02-14 12:32:00
Hands-on Run real Windows in an automatically managed virtual machine, and mix Windows apps in their own windows on your Linux desktop.
WinApps and WinBoat both deliver the same functionality: they run real Windows in a VM and export native Windows apps in individual windows onto your Linux desktops, integrated with your native Linux applications, via the wizardry of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol. RDP was Microsoft’s answer to X11, before the great minds of the Wayland project came along to tell us that we don’t need such things.
For all the abilities of modern Linux, there are some apps – especially paid commercial ones – that still require Windows. We outlined three ways to run Windows apps on Linux in May 2025. WINE is amazing and the current version can run a lot of Windows apps smoothly on Linux – but there are limits to its compatibility: for instance, there’s no Microsoft Store. The main alternative is to run a real copy of Windows inside a virtual machine, and when you need those specific tools, fire up the VM, and use the apps inside it. (Since late 1994, the desktop version of VMWare is free to use – and it both offers pretty good performance for Windows guests, and some helpful integration tools.) Even so, managing a VM does require some effort, and moving your files and data between host and VM inevitably means some extra legwork.
Both WinApps and WinBoat aspire to make…