Atratus Project

Atratus is a Windows program that can run unmodified Linux binaries, eliminating the need to port Linux software to Windows.

What is it?

Atratus is Windows software, that provides similar functionality to Cygwin using Linux binaries. Atratus can load ELF format executables created with gcc under Linux and run them on a Windows system without a CPU emulator or virtual machine. Atratus emulates the Linux system call interface, and works in a similar way to User Mode Linux.

Who is it useful to?

Atratus maybe be useful to you if:

you have software written for Linux and you want to run it on Windows. Atratus can help you to avoid wasting time on a Windows port, and concentrate on adding features to your Linux software.
you need to use Windows in your workplace, and want to work with a Unix-like environment. Atratus is an alternative to Cygwin.

What works?

Applications that work reasonably in v0.12 include:

Most busybox utilities (vi, ash, etc)
vitetris
dash
robotfindskitten
Greed
The dropbear ssh client (dbclient).

To try it out, download the Atratus v0.12 Windows installer, extract to your desktop and run one of the batch files (e.g. vitetris.bat) under the atratus-v0.12 folder. 64-bit Windows is now supported.

Where's the code?

Releases are made monthly around the middle of the month, and are announced on the mailing list and Freecode.

Date	Version	Source	Windows Binary
22 Aug 2013	0.12	atratus-0.12.tar.gz	atratus-v0.12-install.exe
19 July 2013	0.11	atratus-0.11.tar.gz	atratus-v0.11-install.exe
16 Jun 2013	0.10	atratus-0.10.tar.gz	atratus-v0.10-install.exe
16 May 2013	0.9	atratus-0.9.tar.gz	atratus-v0.9-install.exe
18 Apr 2013	0.8	atratus-0.8.tar.gz	atratus-v0.8-install.exe
14 Mar 2013	0.7	atratus-0.7.tar.gz	atratus-0.7-bin.zip
12 Feb 2013	0.6	atratus-0.6.tar.gz	atratus-0.6-bin.zip
18 Jan 2013	0.5	atratus-0.5.tar.gz
14 Dec 2012	0.4	atratus-0.4.tar.gz
18 Nov 2012	0.3	atratus-0.3.tar.gz
16 Oct 2012	0.2	atratus-0.2.tar.gz
15 Aug 2012	0.1	atratus-0.1.tar.gz

Source code is also available via git at git://atratus.org/git/atratus and browsable via gitweb.

Source code for the binary package (busybox, vitetris and robotfindskitten) is available here. The build script is available as a separate git repository.

Atratus source code is licenced under the LGPL v2

If you don't wish to compile atratus yourself, use the self-extracting installer.

Features

Correct fork() and exec(), which have been a stubling block of previous Linux-binary-on-Windows work.
Supports interprocess pipes.
VT100 terminal emulation in the Windows console.
Supports both dynamically and staticly linked executables.
Supports glibc 2.15
"userspace" is isolated in a separate address space, and cannot corrupt "kernel" state.
The filesystem supports Cygwin style symbolic links on top of NTFS
TCP and UDP sockets

Compatibility:

OS Version	32-bit	64-bit
Windows 2000	no	n/a
Windows XP	yes	?
Windows Vista	?	?
Windows 7	yes	yes
Windows 8	?	?

Vista and Windows 8 may work, but are untested.

Hasn't this been done before? What's different?

There are a number of projects that run Posix source or Linux binaries on Windows with various features and limitations:

lbw depends on Microsoft's Interix.
lxrun for SCO
Cygwin, provides POSIX source code compatibility only.
LINE is no longer actively developed
UMLWIN32 was a usermode port of the Linux kernel.
KEOW Kernel emulator on Windows, appears to be no longer developed
Cooperative Linux is Linux running a driver/service in the Windows kernel. Requires Admin privilege to install.
andLinux is Ubuntu + colinux

What's the name mean?

atratus is the Latin word for darkened or black.

cygnus atratus is the scientific name for the Black Swan, an Australian bird. The Black Swan is a book written by Nassim Taleb about improbably events.

Mailing list

atratus-devel - patches, feedback and other discussion about the atratus project

For issues with the website/mailing list, please mail me directly.