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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Boot Windows 10 Directly into Linux Desktop of Choice

Windows 10 Credential Provider intended to simplify the process of logging directly into alternative shells to Windows Explorer. - NathanCastle/BootShellCredentialProvider

This tool allows Windows 10 users to boot directly into a Linux desktop environment of their choosing, bypassing Windows entirely at startup. It's designed for dual-boot users who want flexibility in selecting their… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Boot Windows 10 Directly into Linux Desktop of Choice launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1BC
  2. 2

    Support for bootable OS containers (bootc) and generating disk images - podman-desktop/extension-bootc

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Credentials Dumper for Linux using eBPF. Contribute to citronneur/pamspy development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Windows pod system for Linux. Contribute to kernalix7/winpodx development by creating an account on GitHub.

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Web2Desk▲503

    Turn your favorite websites into a desktop app in one click

    2018 · web2desk.io · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Linux on Windows extender. Contribute to kpocza/LoWe development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7KS

    Hi HN! I built KeyPub.sh to solve the problem of user verification for CLI applications. It's essentially OAuth for the terminal, but using SSH keys that developers and users already have. - No installation needed - works with existing SSH setup - Privacy-focused: users control what email info is shared - Simple email verification process - Free public service - Perfect for CLI app developers who don't want to build user verification Try it with: `$ ssh keypub.sh about` Source code: https://github.com/skariel/keypub

    2024 · keypub.sh · its alternatives →

  8. 8RL

    I made a thing this afternoon. If you are using windows 10 and would like to open windows apps from the ubuntu bash shell normally you can't do that. I wrote this app to (sorta) let you do that. It's a two part app, first is a dotnet core webapi C# app that runs on your windows box. Next is a shell script that you put in your path on the ubuntu shell. It's called Rockhopper (named after a species of penguin, since you are hopping form Linux to windows with this app is just seemed like the right name :) ), and you invoke it like this: rockhopper -c code -a…

    2016 · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    sudo for windows. Contribute to mattn/sudo development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Identity-based, passwordless access to Windows hosts

    2021 · goteleport.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    We talk about a new feature in Teleconsole:\ you can turn any laptop into a secure and publicly accessible SSH server which uses Github SSH keys for authentication.

    2017 · gravitational.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    :computer: :lock: :key: Secure Boot key manager. Contribute to Foxboron/sbctl development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    WSL-style Linux machines for Linux hosts.

    24d ago · frostyard.github.io · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hi HN! I've been working on Bor, an open-source system for centralized Linux desktop management. Bor consists of a lightweight Go agent and a central server. Policies are streamed to clients over mTLS/gRPC in real time—no polling—and currently support Firefox, Chrome, KDE, dconf, polkit and package management, with more coming. Version 0.8 introduces several new policy types - Thunderbird, Microsoft Edge for Business and FirewallD zones, along with a number of improvements and fixes. I'd love feedback on the architecture, policy model, and whether this is something you'd consider for…

    Aug 2026 · getbor.dev · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Start Windows & Linux on your Mac for free

    3d ago · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Yes, this includes the MBR and partition boot sector. The partition table is modeled as a class hierarchy. Second stage loads a kernel from a FAT32 file. I'm normally a C programmer, but for a work project, I recently revisited C++, a language that I had an on-again-off-again relationship over the years. I did this as a fun training exercise on the side to get familiar with the language again, but obsessed a bit and kind of overshot the target. I thought the result might be of interest to someone.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I started writing Thoreau BASIC because I wanted a small, old-fashioned BASIC interpreter: line numbers, immediate mode, simple graphics, strings, arrays, the sort of environment where the computer starts with a "Ready" prompt and you can immediately make it do something. Then I wondered: why should it need an operating system? So I made it boot directly on x64 machines using UEFI. The UEFI version uses the Graphics Output Protocol for its framebuffer and gets its keyboard input directly from the firmware. There is no Windows or Linux underneath it. The machine boots into BASIC. It supports…

    Aug 2026 · tarjan.itch.io · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    The fastest web client for Remote Desktop. You don't need to install any plugins or client software to connect. All your computers are always one click away from any browser.

    2018 · allmydesktops.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19ZZ
  20. 20

    It is fairly simple, but useful for non-power users: a statically-linked Qt app that gracefully edits Windows Boot Manager to do a reboot-once into GRUB, which in turn launches ZorinOS live/installer from disk loopback. I needed to make a custom initramfs with dislocker in it, and to squeeze it a little (default Windows EFI partition is not so big). Currently my biggest issue is that systemd is unable to shut down gracefully when rootfs is mounted from such a deep loop stack. The other is that installing to full disk crashes right after it successfully damages the partition table. I…

    Apr 2026 · 1clicklinux.org · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22OG
  23. 23

    How often do you screw up the system so much you have to reformat the disk (without losing data) to fix it? Well, sometimes I do, and sometimes I can't be bothered to burn a live ISO onto a USB stick. There's initramfs, but it's hardly a pleasant environment, with network configuration and all. My go-to solution has typically been to create a chroot with busybox and a few utilities in /tmp, chroot into it, and then kill services that use the solid drive so that I can unmount it. That's an error-prone process, and sometimes systemd itself uses disk, so you can't unmount the drive despite…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    A step-by-step guide how to create a simple OS from scratch.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →