Atratus Project

Atratus is a Windows program that can run unmodified Linux binaries.

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 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.

What works?

Applications that work reasonably in v0.9 include busybox, vitetris, dash, robotfindskitten, Greed and some of the BSD Games.

To try it out, download the Atratus v0.9 Windows (32-bit) installer, extract to your desktop and run one of the batch files (e.g. vitetris.bat) under the atratus-v0.9 folder. It will not work on 64-bit Windows yet.

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
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 a binary package (zip file).

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
Independent, from-scratch implementation of Linux syscall APIs.
Compatibility:

OS Version 32-bit

Windows 2000 no

Windows XP yes

Windows Vista ?

Windows 7 yes

Windows 8 ?

Vista and Windows 8 may work, but are untested. 64-bit is support is coming soon.

OS Version	32-bit
Windows 2000	no
Windows XP	yes
Windows Vista	?
Windows 7	yes
Windows 8	?

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.

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.