Cameyo - Like VMware's ThinApp, but completely free

[Arthur]

Finally! A free application virtualization program. I haven't had a chance to try it out, but this looks like a really good alternative to ThinApp, so I thought it might be worth starting a new thread about it.

 

Website / Download /

 

From their website...

 

Cameyo is a free, open-architecture application virtualization product. It combines best-of-breed application virtualization technology with simplicity.

 

Application virtualization technology packages entire applications into a single standalone executable, eliminating the need to install.

 

While application virtualization technology has been around for years, good application virtualization products have been expensive and complex to learn. Whether you are a home user or an enterprise IT administrator, take your applications with you or deploy them easily.

 

At Cameyo, we believe application virtualization should be within everyone's reach.

 

 

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/6159/cameyo.png

Edited August 31, 2010 by Arthur
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[apaton]

Found a review which may be helpful Virtualize applications with Cameyo | Freeware Reviews | dotTech

[Arthur]

Good review. It doesn't look like VMware have anything to worry about at this stage.

[joshd]

We've just done total network rebuilds for a couple of primary schools we look after and we've gone almost completely down the app virtualization route using cameyo.

Its brilliant for running all the crappy cheaply made education software. All of our workstations are now essentially 'clean' and enumerate any new virtual apps at the beginning of the users session, if the script detects any new or updated apps, it downloads them to the local machine and copies the appropriate shortcuts into the launcher.

 

Makes life so much easier.

[cameyo]

joshd,

I couldn't help reading your post -- I'd be very interested in hearing how we can make your life easier with regards to application updating & patching. If you can privately send me email to cameyo at cameyo.com it'd be great!

Thanks

 

We've just done total network rebuilds for a couple of primary schools we look after and we've gone almost completely down the app virtualization route using cameyo.

Its brilliant for running all the crappy cheaply made education software. All of our workstations are now essentially 'clean' and enumerate any new virtual apps at the beginning of the users session, if the script detects any new or updated apps, it downloads them to the local machine and copies the appropriate shortcuts into the launcher.

 

Makes life so much easier.

[kmount]

This looks very interesting.

 

Welcome to Edugeek Cameyo.

[Dos_Box]

Currently in pub with Ric and can't understand how this thread passed under our collective radar. Will give it a closer look tomorrow.

[EduTech]

I did download this and have a play with it, looks very interesting and it did work great! i'll provide further feedback once i've tested it in a few other environments i wish to see how it behaves once introduced in a test environment.

 

James.

[AyatollahPies]

Word up

[Butuz]

Wow this looks good! Time to have a play!!!

 

Butuz

[glennda]

I'm just installing a vm to play - will report back on what i think.

 

Toby

[ChrisH]

I had a quick go and it looks okay. I wonder how well a package made on XP will work on 7 and vice versa. I assume there should not be many issues as it is "virtualised"

[edutech4schools]

I wonder how well a package made on XP will work on 7

 

I was just going to post this.

[Butuz]

Good work jin!

 

I take it we'd have to rebuild the app every time we had a SIMS update though?

 

Butuz

[edutech4schools]

Wonder how well the apps runs over vpn?

[pantscat]

Is there a central management tool for this? Something that will let you deploy apps to groups of computers?

 

I dabbled with application virtualisation about two years ago with SVS... it worked quite well for some packages, but for others it was a real pain. The most awful thing about it was how the central administration through Altiris was bolted on as an after thought.

[SimpleSi]

Have we found the Holy Grail of package deployment? :-)

 

And how did this slip by for the past few months

 

Si

[Arthur]

Have we found the Holy Grail of package deployment?

I think there's still room for improvement.

 

One thing I would really like to see is the ability to add, remove and modify registry entries in the package editor. For the moment at least, I can't use Cameyo because there is no way to delete the random registry keys which inevitably get captured (for example, when you open Windows Explorer once the initial snapshot has been created and it updates various keys which have nothing to do with the package) or manually insert additional registry settings at a later date.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Arthur

[jcs808]

I've been using this off and on for a while now. I like to use it if I can when someone wants to evalutate a piece of software. It works OK but sometimes after I've packaged up an application it'll work on some computers but not on others. I've never had the time to look into why though.

[joshd]

joshd,

I couldn't help reading your post -- I'd be very interested in hearing how we can make your life easier with regards to application updating & patching. If you can privately send me email to cameyo at cameyo.com it'd be great!

Thanks

 

Hi Cameyo

 

The issue we are having at the moment is in regards to centrally managing and deploying the virtual apps, not with cameyo itself.

Our initial plan was to have the virtual apps available in a shared folder on our server and get the users to run them from there. The problem however, is that the majority of the small primary schools we look after are moving to an almost entirely wireless based infrastructure due to various reasons. We dont think that wireless is reliable enough, or would have enough bandwidth to be constantly streaming apps like this. Our next step was to a login script that copied the apps down to the machine at login. This has been working ok except that if a machine doesnt run a script for some reason (i.e. not connected to the network on login), the apps dont get copied down blah blah.

Our current plan is to build a custom application launched along the lines of xialinks. Our idea is that the machines will run a launcher at logon (or when a teacher or students loads it up from a desktop icon), it will then enumerate a list of available apps from a network share and present this in the launcher. The user can then select an app to run which will be copied down on demand when the user clicks the icon. We will also build in a 'cache' system so that once a user has requested an app once, it will always run from a local cached version. We will build in a version checking system so that if we update an app server side, the launcher will detect this and copy down the new version.

We are not primarily coders, so progress on this might not be super quick, but we think that once it is built it will be quite a good solution.

 

Any comments? Some of the other commercial app virtualization providers have started providing launchers and streaming apps capabilities, is this something that might make it into the cameyo roadmap? (its a big ask for an opensource project i know!

 

*update* We are also going to look at combining this with the Windows EWF feature which is kind of like Windows Steady state.

[joshd]

I set up a clean virtual client, with nothing installed apart from dot net framework (2.0).

 

I packaged SIMS just to see what happens...

 

It works! It's just a proof of principle with no real hard testing, but I managed to get SIMS to run on a clean machine (with dot net framework) from a packaged app living on a network share - no local install whatsoever.

 

Very good work, Cameyo!

 

Jin, we also have SIMS client virtualization working with Cameyo! Our plan is to setup a test SIMS environment in our office ( we provide managed services to a number fo schools), then qhen theres a sims update, we can package and test in our office and then deploy the same package to all the schools.

[SimpleSi]

@joshd

No need to invent again

WPKG is the deployment method to use.

 

Afaik it can pretty much all you want and in practice it will def do the main requirements.

For instance I use it to deploy portable apps to local drive and run then from there, it can keep track of any updates and can do version checking.

 

Regards simon

Edited January 26, 2011 by SimpleSi

[SimpleSi]

That's no need not nice need

[ChrisH]

Then one awkward app I wanted it to work on was the Access Reading Test from Hodder. It loads but can't find the exam oh well. Seems to work with everything else though so I will use it on some stuff. I will manage it with a script for startup/shutdown that looks at a directory for what should be installed on the machines and copy them over. Nice and simple.

[SimpleSi]

I've created a Wiki page at

Cameyo - Wiki

 

where we can all add in what applications we managed to get working with this software and ones that we can't

 

regards

 

Simon