WinBoat 0.9 Alpha released
WinBoat 0.9 Alpha is now ready for testing! It’s an Electron app designed to let you run Windows applications on your Linux system.
For this first alpha release, they've focused on solidifying the core approach: running a Windows environment inside a Docker container (or Podman, as we'll see). This isn't just about translating individual programs; it's creating a seamless way for those familiar tools to work right at home. The WinBoat Guest Server performs all the necessary communication with the internal Windows session.
One neat update is the new support for Podman itself. Now, when you install, you've got a choice: standard Docker or Podman mode. Just remember, USB passthrough isn't working yet if you pick Podman, but they're still ironing out those details.
Also, their sights have been set on Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps this time around. That means things like the Microsoft Store apps can now be properly detected and launched within WinBoat's setup.
On the customization front, there are some interesting additions. You can now create your own custom shortcuts for launching specific programs, kind of like making aliases or symlinks, but targeted at Windows apps running inside Linux via WinBoat. Filtering apps works differently too, letting you pick and choose from a list directly. And configuration gets more flexible because you can adjust scaling settings properly.
To help keep things smooth with Docker/Podman services, new installs will automatically reserve a block of specific ports (47270-47370). This should reduce the chance of conflicts down the line.
For those tweaking their environment further, configuration allows modifying FreeRDP arguments too. They even added a wm-class prefix specifically so you can style how these Windows windows look within your Linux window manager. Good thing for users who like specific appearances or have compositor quirks, there’s now an option to disable animations if needed.
Digging into the fixes side, things got smoother this time. Automatic unmounting of installation ISOs is built-in now, which might prevent some CPU usage spikes you could experience when RDP monitoring was active previously. Typographical errors have been corrected, and the system now better identifies Podman-compose setups when used by someone.
All these changes mean the codebase has evolved significantly; this alpha version reflects a lot of work towards stability before pushing it further out there. Give WinBoat 0.9 Alpha a try if you enjoy running Windows apps on Linux or want to explore new features such as UWP and custom app creation.
Just for context while we're here, the related Docker/Windows project got its version bump too; headless instances are set to use loopback interfaces by default now, so bound ports go straight to localhost automatically, and they've just generally beefed up security across the board.
The WinBoat team seems pretty committed. Hopefully, this is a step forward in making the Windows-in-Linux experience much more seamless for everyone.
The alpha version can be downloaded from the GitHub page below:
Release WinBoat v0.9.0-alpha2
Fixes: WinBoat now detects podman-compose installations as expected Full Changelog: v0.9.0-alpha...v0.9.0-alpha2
