A Wandering Mind's Journal

Microsoft has officially stamped an end-of-life date on its "last version of Windows." With consumer builds of Windows 10 losing feature and security updates on October 14, 2025 (LTSC diehards get a bit more runway, of course), it felt fitting to mark the occasion from the perspective of a full-time Linux user.

If Windows 10 is riding off into the sunset, what does "Windows compatibility" look like on the penguin side today? I decided to celebrate by revisiting the different ways we can integrate Windows applications into a Linux desktop—not just booting a VM, but making those apps feel as native and launchable as anything else installed locally.

The Premise

Integration, in this context, means:

• Launching Windows applications directly from the Linux menu or launcher.
• Having those apps play nicely with native file pickers and storage.
• Reducing the "VM tax" friction as much as possible (while accepting that Linux tinkering is still a form of recreational headache).

The Options

Several toolchains try to bridge this gap, each with its own flavor of compromise.

1. Wine — the classic translation layer. Lightweight, surprisingly capable for many workloads, but notoriously temperamental with complex suites like Microsoft Office.
2. Winboat — a Dockerized Windows VM with a friendly Electron launcher. It abstracts virtualization away behind a UI.
3. Winapps — a toolkit that lets you bring your own virtualization backend (libvirt, Docker, Podman) and wire the resulting Windows apps into your desktop environment.

What to Choose?

As with most Linux decisions, it depends on what you need to run.

• For gaming, Proton (the same tooling Valve ships on the Steam Deck) has been so good that Steam on Linux already covers 90% of my needs.
• Productivity apps, especially Microsoft Office, remain the Achilles heel. Office still struggles under Wine, so I started hunting for something sturdier.

After a few YouTube rabbit holes and too many Stack Overflow tabs, the shortlist narrowed to Winapps and Winboat.

Winapps vs. Winboat: The Comparison

Winapps (github.com/winapps-org/winapps)

Pros

• Choose your backend: libvirt (QEMU + KVM), Docker, or Podman.
• Desktop integration is top-tier—app menu entries, MIME associations, the works.
• Maximum bragging rights when you finally get NAT, SPICE, and shared folders cooperating.

Cons

• You need a decent grasp of virtualization to troubleshoot the inevitable edge cases.
• Performance lives or dies by your configuration. If it's slow, it's on you.
• No GUI out of the box; it's scripts, config files, and stubbornness.

Winboat (github.com/TibixDev/winboat)

Pros

• Quick setup—the installer automates almost everything.
• Ships with an Electron launcher UI for managing apps (assuming you don't mind another Chromium instance in RAM).
• Works out of the box for most mainstream Windows applications.

Cons

• You're locked into Docker—no KVM acceleration via libvirt.
• The UI being Electron means more resources burned on the host.
• Debugging is harder because the abstraction layers hide the plumbing.

What I Went With

If you've met me, you already know the answer: Winapps with a libvirt backend. I started with Docker for convenience, but the performance ceiling nudged me toward libvirt. Once KVM got involved, latency dropped and everything felt far more responsive.

So, How Does It Look?

Honestly? A little magical. Seeing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint show up in the GNOME app grid and launch like native apps never loses its novelty.

Screenshot placeholder: Word launched from the Linux app menu, decorated with the same shell theme as native apps.

But What Did It Cost?

Resource usage depends on the Windows image you choose:

• Windows 10 LTSC: surprisingly smooth with 4 GB RAM and 2 vCPUs.
• Windows 11 Enterprise/LTSC: a hungry beast that wants at least 8 GB RAM and 4 vCPUs to feel snappy.

Screenshot placeholder: Windows 11 VM idling while swallowing 95% of its assigned memory.

These requirements are manageable on a modern desktop, but they're worth keeping in mind if you're running a lean setup.

The End of an Era—or a New Beginning?

Windows 10's retirement is oddly poetic. Ten years ago, running Windows software on Linux meant dual-boot contortions and endless driver hunts. Today, a handful of community projects let us embed those apps right into our daily drivers.

Winapps isn't flawless—it is gloriously hacky, stitched together from virtualization fandom and sheer stubborn will—but it works. And watching Microsoft Word behave like it's genuinely at home on Arch still makes my brain do a double take.

So here's to Windows 10: thanks for the memories, and the updates (while they lasted). And here's to Linux, the penguin that can now run Word out of spite. We've come a long way from needing WSL to run Bash.