ring3k - A User Mode Kernel

About

ring3k is a user mode kernel, similar to User mode linux, designed to run Windows 2000 and XP compatible native applications on a Linux platform.

It is a light-weight virtualization of Windows 2000 for the Linux x86 platform achieved by reimplementing kernel mode code as a ring 3 process in C++ that catches NT system calls using ptrace.

ring3k code is LGPL licensed.

Ring3k is able to run a simple Windows test application (Wine's winemine.exe, shown to the right) as it would run on Windows.

Project goals

Ring3k's goal is to install a full Windows environment from an installation CDROM and run it.

We aim to do this by:

providing an alternate method of virtualization
making application's address space indistinguishable from native Windows
moving closed and non-free code out of ring 0
creating a test suite for the NT Native Interface

Windows drivers and rootkits will not be supported!

Download

ring3k-0.0.24.tar.gz was released on 25 July 2009 with:

Beginnings of support for a native registry editor
Handle Linux syscalls in the client like Windows
Cleanup of the directory structure

The project is current under development, and is not yet suitable for end users.

For more information, see the list of frequently asked questions

Freshmeat annoucements: [0.0.24] [0.0.23] [0.0.22] [0.0.21] [0.0.20] [0.0.20] [0.0.19] [0.0.18] [0.0.17] [0.0.16] [0.0.15]

Source repository access:

git clone git://ring3k.org/git/ring3k

Alternatively:

git clone git://github.com/mikemccormack/ring3k.git

Browse source code.

Quick Start

Instructions for the impatient (using Debian/Etch and a Windows 2000 ISO):

sudo apt-get install mingw32 libxml2-dev libsdl1.2-dev genisoimage git-core libfreetype6-dev
git clone git://mandoo.dyndns.org/ring3k.git
cd ring3k
./configure
make
ln -s /path/to/your/win2k.iso
make test
./ring3k

All tests should pass and running ./ring3k should give you a window with some GDI tests in it.

Please report any problems on the mailing list.

Screenshots

A few screenshots of test programs running on ring3k:

minitris.exe - a spartan application	track.exe mouse test
winemine.exe - a game from Wine