1

Hello SpiceHeads,

I’m hoping to avail myself on your knowledge as I am a linux noob in many respects.

A little background: I have this idea to deploy something like a Raspberry Pi to our clients sites to handled remote support and troubleshooting without having to get access to a clients computer on site first. However, we would also like to install a program we use to submit data about printers back to us. This program is an x86 Windows-only system, but is compatible going back to XP and isn’t built on .NET Frameworks.

My question for you is, how would you get the x86 program to run in a Linux environment? I have tried using Crossover for Linux, but it appears that it is only x86 or x64 compatible and thus won’t run on ARM7.

Alternatively, has anyone been able to get a version of Windows with a GUI (i.e. NOT Windows 10 IoT Core) to run on something like a Raspberry Pi so I could use this Windows program?

Any suggestions that anyone can suggest would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

3 Spice ups
(VWernicke) 2

You could use WINE.

3

Hi Wvernicke,

I’ve tried using WINE a little, but when I tried to connect through Terminal to a PPA I would keep getting an error that it couldn’t find the version of WINE (I think its on 1.6 for the stable version) when I tried to install it.

Any pointers on place that has a good set of instructions on installing WINE on Ubuntu (specifically I’m using Ubuntu MATE right now).

Thanks for the help!

4

You would be better served by getting a Dual Core Celeron Intel NUC for $140 USD, then add in a SSD drive and 4GB of ram for a total of ~$230 USD. This will run Windows 7 “just OK” for the price. I think the windows performance index was 4.2 with the limiting factor of the graphics card.

Even if you could get it to run WINE or any other emulator the Raspberry PI would be terribly slow (even the Pi 2).

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5

That is not going to help with the cross-architecture issues. Even Windows itself can’t work here.

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6

Your project is not going to work. AMD64 and Aarm32 are not compatible. Plain and simple. It is two completely different architectures. So the first thing that you would need is a full AMD64 emulation layer to run on top of the far less powerful Aarm32 architecture. No one makes one of this because it is such a bad idea (the opposite works moderately well.)

So if you think about the drop in performance from even a tiny AMD64 chip (like an Intel Atom) to the super low end Aarm32 in the RP2, that alone would make performance horrific. Now imagine you are running an emulator that takes away 80% of the remaining performance! So imagine the slowest PC you have ever seen, now imagine something 1/10th the speed. That’s about where you would be starting.

Now imagine you have hardly any memory and can barely load the OS. Now imagine that that OS is Linux, not Windows. Now that you are running this emulator you need to figure out how to get Windows libraries over to this machine and deal with putting Windows apps on Linux after that point.

Basically no, you can’t do this and there are really good reasons why even if someone thought this was an interesting PhD project to make happen, it would be completely useless.

2 Spice ups
7

Hi George1421,

Thanks for the suggestion, I would love to use an Intel NUC. However, that is double the price for the bulk cost of the Pi 2 (which would be around $70-$80 for all the components) and for my company they want to keep the price down so I need to try and make it work with the Pi 2 for now.

I should also add that the size of the Pi itself is attractive as well as we would like to attach the Pi 2 to the back of the printers we are deploying.

Thank you for your input and suggestion!

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Wine doesn’t exist for ARM. So you have nothing to look for.

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Figure out what data you need in regards to your printers and build a light-weight version of the application yourself using python, ruby, or bash. Run said code on your Raspberry-PI.

Otherwise, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll need to get your hands on the source code of the application and recompile for ARM.

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10

Whoa, “keeping the price down” is the exact opposite of this project. Trying to redesign the wheel from an architecture AND OS perspective is an epic project. This is a massively expensive project to even consider, let alone pull off. It would be, at best, pretty fragile. If you had a few million to throw at it up front, I could see you getting a large enough team to get this done in a year. But the result would be… awful.

11

And for Linux! Or don’t even make it rely on either. Move to a neutral technology that doesn’t care about the OS or the architecture (like Python, Ruby or JavaScript.)

3 Spice ups
12

Yup. Rewriting the original application from scratch has to be no more than 1% the effort of this project. And so much better as a result. Make something modern and good for cheap (relatively) rather than spending a fortune to end up with something terrible.

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Whats the price of it not working or is something that is fragile which you have to put a lot of effort into?
I understand the lure of using the Raspberry Pi. I have one at home where I’m toying with FreePBX on it. For an embedded device (what it was intended) it works great. When you try to make it into something its not that’s when the processor falls short.

I’m trying to think of a way you could even use that as an RDP jump box, but you will need a full linux gui to support rdesktop or vnc.

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14

You definitely “could” make it work as that. Work well or do it easily, couldn’t say. But an RDP jump system is feasible. You could even do it using an NX Proxy.

I’m not recommending it, this all seems pretty silly. But just saying, there are ways.

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15

Sounds like you are better off just adding a VPN client to the Raspberry and scripting your fancy programs to run via a schedule through the VPN to the printers.

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16

If you’re just pulling information for printers you could probably just setup ssh access to your Raspberry PI and then use SNMP to query your networked printer(s) status and pull the appropriate information you need.

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17

I dunno, if SSH is a viable means of securely accessing the PIs I think a VPN would just be unnecessary complexity.

18

Hello All,

Thank you for your input, I will definitely take this back to my boss and have another discussion with him about the costs of a NUC. As I said I am fairly inexperienced in Linux and programming in general so I didn’t know the restriction and issues that could be caused by trying to port a Windows-based program into ARM7. I had played around with some other Windows programs in a Linux VM and was able to get them to work, but didn’t take into account the major difference in the processor architecture.

Just as an FYI I have been able to get a RPD/VNC/SSH client and an unattended access client (ScreenConnect) installed and running on the Pi2 and it works pretty well, it definitely is a little sluggish at times, but overall it runs well.

If there are other ideas please keep them coming so I have more info to share when I talk with my boss about this project.

19

If footprint/power consumption isn’t a major issue. Just get your hands on some older X86 netbooks. You can probably find them in bulk for 100$ a piece.

You could also look at a little Single board PC like this,

It’s X86 and could probably muddle through running wine for you.

Lastly, a little pricey but solid as heck, look at CLI Embedded windows 7 units. They are rock solid, we use them in warehouse, dock’s, gatehouses, and other nasty places where we just need the gear to work.

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SSH would just be a form of VPN in that case.

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