Seamless Linux and Windows

I have one foot in the Windows world and the other in the Linux world. Often times I need to be able to work in both OSes at the same time. Ideally I should be able to run Linux apps and windows apps side-by-side. I’ve tried many different options in the past:

• SSH from a Windows host to Linux host
• Forwarding Linux X11 display to Windows Xserver
• Cygwin on Windows
• RDP from Linux to Windows
• Wine running Win32 apps on Linux host
• Linux VM on a Windows Host
• Windows VM on a Linux Host
• synergy (very slick)
• KVMs

None of these solutions are prefect. I’m always in search of better Linux-Windows desktop integration. I haven’t found the perfect solution yet, but did learn a new trick the other day that gets me a little closer. Using seamlessrdp I am able to login to remote Windows machines over RDP and have applications from my Windows box to my Linux box share the same desktop. See the photo below.

There are a number of good seamlessrdp howtos out there. But be aware that some of them direct you to disable Windows passwords, or store them in shell scripts (and possibly in .bash_history files).

It is probably a better to do something like this instead…

rdesktop -x l -rsound -A -s "c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe C:\Windows\explorer.exe" 192.168.1.9 -u username -p `zenity --entry --hide-text --text "Enter Windows Password:"`

I’ve set up my system to prompt me for my password using Zenity. That way no password are stored in shell scripts.