QEmu, a much better Bochs alternative
I have been using and testing QEmu lately, instead of Bochs, and its amazing. QEmu has come a long way very quickly. Right now its installing my BeOS 4.5 CD and its not having any difficulty at all. Something VMWare Workstation and Bochs couldnt do.
Im running a nightly build (20040730). When it gets a nice windows interface (assuming…), it will be quite kickass and make Bochs obsolete. I think bochs is already obsolete pretty much already anway.
QEmu already has a working PCI interface which is a godsend to hobbyist osdevelopers, which is another thing Bochs lacks.
QEmus biggest boast is its multi architecture emulation. Currently it can emulate x86-32, PowerPC-PREP, PowerPC-PowerMac.
Aside from architectures it can run Linux binaries (from inside linux) of several platforms, Linux X86, Linux Sparc V8, Linux ARM, Linux PowerPC.
Until I get back to England and test it on my laptop, I cant really tell how good or bad QEmu’s built in NE2000 support is. I know Bochs really sucks for inbuilt NIC’s. You have to have external tools and such. Its a real PITA. Im hoping QEmu has it all native.
It will be nice and speedy for testing my osdev stuff. But I dont know yet if I will give up my paid for and highly prized VMWare Workstation. Put the VMWare front end on QEmu and Ill think about it. What would be best for *me* would be if QEmu supported VMWare disks nativly. I know bochs can convert VMWare 3 images to flat style images.. If the format for VMWare 4 disks were known, I wouldnt mind hacking in support to make them native in QEmu. Then I wouldnt need to faff about and have two separate setups with VMware, and QEmu for testing…
QEmu homepage here
QEmu Nighlty Windows Build here (choose build you want).
QEmu Windows info and Tips here
The Morphix QEmu WIKI is here
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