best 10 Open Source Software To Run Linux On Windows




A lot of people need to run both Windows and Linux on a single PC. In order to do this, you need to use virtualisation software that can allow you to get the best out of your system


1. Cooperative Linux

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine.

2. QEMU

QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. 

3. VMware Player

VMware Inc. is one of the biggest names in the virtualisation software arena.
The VMware player is one of its software.

4. OpenVZ

OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated Linux containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict.

5. VMware Server

VMware server refers to the company's initiatives in server virtualisation.

6. VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version2.

7. Xen

The Xen Project team is a global open source community that develops the Xen Project Hypervisor and its associated subprojects. 


8. Cygwin

This is a collection of GNU and Open Source tools, which can be used in order to run Linux distributions on Windows systems.

9. Portable Ubuntu Remix
This project consist in a portable image of Ubuntu that could run in Windows as a native win32 application. You could execute Linux applications and integrate it in your Windows desktop. This system can be bringing in any removable device such as pendriv


10. Microsoft Virtual PC

Originally written by Connectix, this software was purchased by Microsoft. It lets you run two or more virtual systems with seperate operating systems.