Linux Unified Kernel project or Longene

Linux Unified Kernel, also known as Longene and informally as LUK, is an operating system kernel intended to be binary-compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows and Linux. In order to accomplish this, key features of the Windows kernel are ported to the Linux kernel.

Longene is written in the C programming language and is free and open source software. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). Although the project is in the alpha stage of development as of 2009, many Windows programs already work well.

Features:

Longene aims to add all Windows kernel mechanisms, including system calls, Windows Registry, Windows Driver Model, Deferred Procedure Call, and others, into the Linux kernel to form a new kernel. The new kernel will allow both Linux and Windows applications and device drivers to work without virtualization or emulation.

In order to prevent bloating, if a function is available in both the ReactOS and Linux kernel, the Linux implementation is used. Functions are implemented using Linux loadable kernel modules, so they can be loaded and unloaded easily.

Longene has two sets of system calls and their corresponding tables: a Windows syscall set and a Linux syscall set. Windows applications call the syscall table via software interrupt "int 0x2e". Linux applications call the syscall table via "int 0x80".

The Linux Unified Kernel project does not develop the Windows and the Linux userland libraries. Those libraries are offered by others projects, such as Wine, ReactOS, and GNU.

http://en.wikipedia...._Unified_Kernel

Source code and binaries for Ubuntu, Red Flag and Fedora can be found at:
http://www.longene.org/en/download.php

Main site:
http://www.longene.org/

I don't get the point of this project.
I can have 1 Kernel for both, but would still need to have both Linux and Windows systemfiles. So what's the advantage over having a Linux and a Windows system?

I don't know either.

For my case, WINE runs most of the executables that I need without troubles or those that are more windows-dependent can run from VirtualBox.

I'm downloading the ubuntu version to see how this works.

It uses a modified Linux kernel that also supports Windows System calls. The Windows API is provided by a modified WINE version (some parts of wineserver are moved to the kernel).

So you don't need any Microsoft Windows files (nor a license).

Read the Wiki link that I did give in my first post for more info.

IceCube, have you already tried installing it?

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 and the debian package doesn't allow to correctly install.

Do you have any tips to get this going?

I didn't try it myself yet.
I have Ubuntu 9.10 installed here (my 9.04 is trashed due to installing a binary drive for my videocard).

It should be possible to run it on Ubuntu 9.04:
http://www.longene.o...it=ubuntu#p6338

Did you uninstall WINE (of Ubuntu) first? You need the modified WINE.

Did you uninstall WINE (of Ubuntu) first? You need the modified WINE.

No, I guess I didn't..

Will run from the emulator to check the results.

Well.. I tried this out on a virtual machine with a mint state Ubuntu 9.10

Installed ok this time but what exactly is this project supposed to bring as advantage?

I've tried running ninja.exe which uses some windows calls and didn't worked, then I tried installing the imdisk driver from Olof and also failed.

If anybody wants me to run any further tests - do suggest them and I'll try to comply.

What is the advantage ?
Windows application run on Win32 which run on Windows NT kernel.
Windows driver run on Windows NT kernel.
WINE is Win32 clone running on Linux. It does not support Windows driver.
ReactOS is Windows clone including both kernel and user-mode library. It does not support Linux application.
LUK plan to support kernel mode driver.
When/If LUK is completed, we would be able to use Windows driver in Linux. It would be more capable than WINE or ReactOS alone. This is interesting.

So the main reason for this project is to enable Linux to use Windows drivers.
Didn't knew that Linux has still trouble getting drivers from the manufacturers.