Bochs and VMware

[Doomwookie]

Is Bochs a good alternative to VMware? I know Bochs is supposed to be slower than vmware, but how much slower? I've used vmware before, but the $300 price tag is pretty discouraging.
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Doomwookie
Toshiba Satellite P25-S607
Gentoo/Windows MCE Dualboot

[m0pr0be]

hi,

if you only need to run the emulator occasionally then bochs will be fine. but if you have to rely heavily on it then you would probably use vmware.

[Clete2]

Uh, sorry for the half offtopic, but how do you pronounce bochs? botches? (like blotches without the l)
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[camouflageX]

box

[Plain-old-Jeb]

Bochs emulates a complete computer system i.e. CPU .etc. and can be run on any hardware platform (Read: Non-intel e.g. PPC, Sparc .etc.).

VMware only emulates the parts of the system which need to be emulated I.e. Devices, privlage level 0 CPU instructions (Stuff for pagging .etc.), but normal instructions are directly executed by your physical CPU it is NOT run through an emulated CPU this has the advantages of speed, and access to extra's offered by the procesor e.g. 3Dnow SSE .etc. the offshoot of all those gains is that VMware can only be run on i386 compatibles.

Personally I'd recommend VMware however if you want x-Arch compatibility or a reasonable price tag then Bochs is a far better option, why not try Bochs and see if it suits your needs and if not then VMware is your best option as its performance, networking options and device emulation/access are far superior to that of Bochs.
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emerge -C world

[Clete2]

Anyone else having the ~x86 one fail compiling?

a - mul_Xsig.o
ranlib libfpu.a
make[1]: Leaving directory `/var/tmp/portage/bochs-2.0.2/work/bochs-2.0.2/fpu'
echo done
done
/bin/sh ./libtool --mode=link g++ -o bochs -Os -march=pentium3 -funroll-loops -pipe -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGE_FILES `sdl-config --cflags` `wx-config --cxxflags` `gtk-config --cflags` -DBX_SHARE_PATH='"/usr/share/bochs"' -export-dynamic logio.o main.o load32bitOShack.o state_file.o pc_system.o osdep.o plugin.o \
iodev/libiodev.a cpu/libcpu.a memory/libmemory.a gui/libgui.a \
\
\
fpu/libfpu.a \
-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lSM -lICE -lX11 `sdl-config --cflags --libs` `wx-config --libs` \
\
\
\
\
-lm
mkdir .libs
jade:/usr/share/sgml/docbook/dsssl-stylesheets-1.77/html/../common/dbtable.dsl:224:13:E: 2nd argument for primitive "ancestor" of wrong type: "#<unknown object 135618624>" not a singleton node list
jade:/usr/share/sgml/docbook/dsssl-stylesheets-1.77/html/../common/dbtable.dsl:224:13:E: 2nd argument for primitive "ancestor" of wrong type: "#<unknown object 135618624>" not a singleton node list
make[1]: *** [user/book1.html] Error 8
make[1]: Leaving directory `/var/tmp/portage/bochs-2.0.2/work/bochs-2.0.2/doc/docbook'
make: *** [build_docbook] Error 2
make: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
g++ -o bochs -Os -march=pentium3 -funroll-loops -pipe -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGE_FILES -I/usr/include/SDL -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/lib/wx/include/gtk2-2.4 -DGTK_NO_CHECK_CASTS -D__WXGTK__ -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGE_FILES -I/usr/include/gtk-1.2 -I/usr/include/glib-1.2 -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -DBX_SHARE_PATH=\"/usr/share/bochs\" logio.o main.o load32bitOShack.o state_file.o pc_system.o osdep.o plugin.o -I/usr/include/SDL -D_REENTRANT -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/usr/lib -pthread -Wl,--export-dynamic iodev/libiodev.a cpu/libcpu.a memory/libmemory.a gui/libgui.a fpu/libfpu.a -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lSM -lICE -L/usr/lib /usr/lib/libSDL.so -ldl -lX11 -lXext -lvga -lpthread -lwx_gtk2-2.4 -lm

!!! ERROR: app-emulation/bochs-2.0.2 failed.
!!! Function src_compile, Line 47, Exitcode 2
!!! emake failed

bash-2.05b#
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[Elm0]

plex86 is the opensource equivalent of VMWare (in that it translates kernel calls, rather than emulating an entire processor arch. = SPEED) i honestly don't know how good it is though, i have confidence it will become a good product in the future though

[shm]

[Elm0]

Shame Maybe if Mandrake manage to turn things around (I heard things are looking brighter for them now - although maybe this is simply because they've cut costs right down to a minimum) he will get employed with them again. plex86 would really sell, packaged up and supported, to enterprise customers.

[Plain-old-Jeb]