Winpinator - Warpinator port for Windows released

[swiszczoo]

Hi folks, this is my first post here. When I first opened Warpinator, I immediately liked its ease of use. I decided to start tinkering with porting it to Windows about half a year ago and I've recently finished it and released the first usable version. The project is called Winpinator and should support every Windows machine running Windows 8+ (it should work on Windows 7, but notifications won't be shown). Feel free to test it and let me know if something's not working properly.

Links:
GitHub repo: https://github.com/swiszczoo/winpinator
Project webpage: https://winpinator.swisz.cz/

[ricardogroetaers]

Congratulations on the project.
Unfortunately I can't test it since I no longer have Windows at home.
If this software can transfer files between Windows and Linux machines, it will be great.
Success in your project and development.

[xenopeek]

I also don't have Windows here but thanks for making this! It will be of use to others.

We've added a list of ports to other platforms, including yours, on the Warpinator project: https://github.com/linuxmint/warpinator ... unofficial

[WriteF]

Hi folks, this is my first post here. When I first opened Warpinator, I immediately liked its ease of use. I decided to start tinkering with porting it to Windows about half a year ago and I've recently finished it and released the first usable version. The project is called Winpinator and should support every Windows machine running Windows 8+ (it should work on Windows 7, but notifications won't be shown). Feel free to test it and let me know if something's not working properly.

Links:
GitHub repo: https://github.com/swiszczoo/winpinator
Project webpage: https://winpinator.swisz.cz/

Awesome work. I swear I will test it somewhere this week.

Easy and accessable LAN file-sharing was one of the basic functionalities that have long been neglected in Linux, and since Windows 10 it has also become a pain in Windows. I used to do streaming to my "home-cinema" a lot with Windows XP workgroup so that is saying something. Never once got Samba to work either so Warpinator was a blessing. Printing is also been improved greatly so this just leaves scanning.

[HAWR]

I've tried it with a Windows laptop and my Linux desktop PC and it worked immediately without problems. Thank's a lot for Winpinator

[Drugwash]

Some error. This is the least of the problems in the 'make two computers communicate through warpinator' issue.
The biggest one is the damn thing won't compile in Mint 19.2 because of a stupid package that requires another package that it then uninstalls automatically and then whines about it missing. Windows is a breeze compared to Linux when it comes to installing stuff.

[swiszczoo]

Some error. This is the least of the problems in the 'make two computers communicate through warpinator' issue.
The biggest one is the damn thing won't compile in Mint 19.2 because of a stupid package that requires another package that it then uninstalls automatically and then whines about it missing. Windows is a breeze compared to Linux when it comes to installing stuff.

Oh, I see what happened... Winpinator was trying to find your account picture but failed. That popup should never show up. I'll fix that in the next release. Thanks for report!

[Drugwash]

I suspected that much. No big deal. You're welcome.

[swiszczoo]

Hi, Winpinator 0.1.2 has just been released! Some bugs have been fixed:

• Installer now checks for Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable version and forces an update if it's too old
• No more error boxes show up when Winpinator fails to find the account picture (as reported by Drugwash)
• Settings are now saved immediately after clicking OK in the "Preferences" dialog box

Download from GitHub https://github.com/swiszczoo/winpinator ... tag/v0.1.2 or from project homepage https://winpinator.swisz.cz/download.html

[Drugwash]

Thank you. Will check it out one of these days when I fire up the Win8 machine.
Now if only I could compile the original Warpinator on this Mint 19.2 machine in order to connect the two. So far it wouldn't budge.

[AndyMH]

Congratulations, don't use win, but I know how much hard work goes into developing open source software. A genuinely useful application and I hope you get lots of users.

[HAWR]

Hello swiszczoo,

can one simply install 0.1.2 over 0.1.1? I got errors, uninstalled 0.1.1 and rebooted before I could install 0.1.2 successfully. But now it works again Unfortunately I have not written down the errors.

[swiszczoo]

Hello swiszczoo,

can one simply install 0.1.2 over 0.1.1? I got errors, uninstalled 0.1.1 and rebooted before I could install 0.1.2 successfully. But now it works again Unfortunately I have not written down the errors.

Hi, it should be possible to simply install 0.1.2 over 0.1.1. Are you sure you closed Winpinator prior to installing an update? Running executables block write access to their *.exe files so that might explain those installer errors you've seen. If you exited and stopped the Winpinator service, there's also a small possibility that you've encountered a rare bug that despite exiting Winpinator, its process locks itself forever and never actually finishes. That's why reboot did the job. I'm still investigating this issue because tbh I've got no idea why it's ever happening.

[HAWR]

I know, that I closed Winpinator before installing, but as you say, maybe the process was still active in the background. The next time I will write down the error messages.

[Drugwash]

Start Task Manager and look at the running processes, see if anything related to Winpinator is still running after you closed its GUI.
(Hopefully there still is a task manager in these newer OS versions - one never knows what they strip out on a whim )
There may be a network connection stuck or waiting for a timeout. (just shooting in the dark here)

[HAWR]

Yes, the task manager is still there in Windows 10

[JezekiljMonk]

Hello folks!

I have a bunch of Windows machines running under VirtualBox for programming of OMRON PLCs for which there is no Linux software. I blocked Internet access to all these VMs and use them only locally to remotely connect and program my PLCs. So I was more than interested in Warpinator being available for Windows.

Initially I could not get anything working and it would even mess up Warpinator connection between Linux machines. Then I realized I needed to manually install Microsoft Visual C++ and also to make exceptions/rules on Win Firewall. After that everything started to work perfect. Now I have linked with Warpinator the total of: 5 Windows VMs and 9 Linux Mints + 1 Ubuntu MATE on RPi. VMs are with bridged-network adapters, so fully appear to be part of the local Ethernet network.

Only thing I noticed is that after applying some of the updates with Update Manager (especially after firmware updates) I need to restart Warpinator on all of my Linux Mint machines and Ubuntu MATE for it to properly work again. Before I do that it happens typically that there are two isolated groups of connected machines. In one group some of the machines are connected between themselves but not between the machines that are inter-linked in the other group. Win machines in that case remain all with one group or create a third group where only they are connected with Warpinator. After restart everything gets back to normal.

Thanks again for this application!

[thegreenknight]

I will have someone on my team try this out and give you feed back

[krasnit]

Winpinator is a good idea! Warpinator is simple and easy to use, and I hope a version for Android also comes out. Let's face it, it is hard if not impractical for most to abandon these platforms.

But I have an issue with Winpinator. I keep losing connections after some time (eg after a few hours) with other computers running it or Warpinator, especially laptops. I go to preferences and connection and simply click OK and often the other computers will re-appear, but not always so that Winpinator becomes useless. Eventually the other computers may mysteriously re-appear, but, then, they may not until a machine reboot. The automatic network interface selection rarely works so I have to manually set the interface on every machine. This is something that needs to be seriously worked on, because otherwise Winpinator is great!

[dritzominous]

Great work! I've been using this on my LAN at home for simple cross-platform file transfers every now and then. It's like using Apple's Airdrop or Android's nearby share!

Your efforts are greatly appreciated.