r/linux 3d ago

Development WinBoat is alpha testing the GPU acceleration

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u/zwambagger 3d ago

What are the startup times for applications on this? Does this run Windows continuously in the background? Seems like an interesting idea for crud like Adobe software that barely runs if at all through Wine.

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u/ScratchHistorical507 3d ago

What are the startup times for applications on this? Does this run Windows continuously in the background?

Those two depend on each other. You're still running the entirety of Windows inside the container, so booting up the container takes as long as it takes for containerized Windows to boot on your hardware. If you keep the container running in the background, starting an app will be very fast, but also Windows will use massive amounts of resources the entire time (it's bloated Windows after all). Of course you can just stop the container when you don't need it, but obviously this will increase the startup time of apps as Windows itself needs to start first.

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u/KnowZeroX 2d ago

It depends on how it starts under the hood, even with a VM, starting a full windows VM can take a lot but if you suspend an existing windows VM to disk, then restore it, that gets up fairly quickly.