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• The graphical web (invented in the open source Mosaic browser)
• Peer to peer accellerated downloading (bittorrent)
• The majority of things in the DNS system (bind)
• Various interesting and innovative schedulers (linux)
• PC plug and play hardware (Linux)
• Real effective internet package downloading with full dependency tracking (RPM & DPKG)

Theres five and one for free. I'm sure you will be able to point out some systems which had part of the functionality of these, however that is the nature of innovation and why patents are wrong. Everybody's innovation builds on someone else's work to some extent.

Freemware is now called Plex86, and is alive and well :-)
http://www.plex86.org/

As much as I really love VMWare (the software), I think the company's getting too high on the horse. Anybody remember that Accelerated-X package? Once the only x86 X version that would run more than one head? The one that everyone bitched about their prices? Well, I haven't even thought of them since XFree86 got dual-head running, and I imagine I'm not the only one (they were pretty arrogant on USENET, I recall).

When VMWare dropped the home pricing a couple of years ago, I had high hopes for bochs and plex86. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope these days, as development pace appears to be pretty glacial. Some Linux distros need to pitch in to fund the plex86 project. Emulation/virtualization has been commoditized enough that we shouldn't be paying $300/seat for it.

Would anyone in the audience be willing to start a GNU version of a virtual machine monitor (VMM)?

Take a look at Plex86

there is also plex86, which is quite nice if you want to emulate Linux/x86 but not much else works.

Which one is the real plex86?

Interesting question? And what happened to plex86.org?

(there is also a free project similar to vmware, called plex86, I think).
Plex was dead, man. But long live plex! It had the goal of replacing VMWare, but Kevin Lawton lost his job at Mandrake, I believe, and it was orphaned for about a year, but it is now being developed by Rivnphnx at savannah.
Hope it gets on its feet again! Dan

but many forgot to talk about bochs: a free [freespeech] PC emulator.

Bochs emulates a PC, including the CPU. Thus, things become slow, and you may not have enough power to view an MPEG movie, but you can run x86 apps on other CPU architectures. In addition, bochs is slow enough that it runs old DOS games at the "right" speed.

Plex86, on the other hand, runs on x86 processors and "virtualizes" the environment. It emulates only the motherboard, a couple common adapter cards, and some aspects of the inner-ring modes of the CPU. It runs x86 user code natively on the processor, preserving most of the speed.

But if they can build a $200 Lindows PC, why not make a $200 "additional PC" PCI card? It would let Anonymous Coward actually build a Beowulf cluster in his PC's case.

Well, you could use Plex86.

I don't think Bochs can or will do it, but Plex86 (old site) might if it ever gets finished.

This page is a paper by the creator of Plex86 (also the creator of Bochs, I think) explaining pure (machine) emulation, OS/API emulation and virtualization. None of these seem to be exactly what you mentioned, but they're close. By the way, Bochs is pure (machine) emulation and Plex86 uses (will use) virtualization like VMWare. Wine is an example of OS/API emulation.

I don't think Bochs can or will do it, but Plex86 (old site) might if it ever gets finished.

This page is a paper by the creator of Plex86 (also the creator of Bochs, I think) explaining pure (machine) emulation, OS/API emulation and virtualization. None of these seem to be exactly what you mentioned, but they're close. By the way, Bochs is pure (machine) emulation and Plex86 uses (will use) virtualization like VMWare. Wine is an example of OS/API emulation.

I'd opt for booting a minimalist Linux over the network that starts Plex86 with a network image as the hard drive. In this manner, I suspect you can do damned near whatever you want, including emulating CD drives.

Sites: www.plex86.org
bochs.sourceforge.net

Come on. You're not giving them enough credit. After all they've got hello world working fine. It's only a matter of time until it runs MS Office.

Yes, and this and this screenshot both exemplify the rocket-powered progress that plex86 has undergone, placing it well ahead of Bochs.

Yes, and this and this screenshot both exemplify the rocket-powered progress that plex86 has undergone, placing it well ahead of Bochs.

moderate me down if I'm wrong, but hasn't bochs development slowed down in favor of plex86, which does virtualization instead of emulation? [although being fired from Madrake probably didn't encourage Kevin Lawton [?]].

Bochs and VMWare are completely different animals. Comparing their relative performances is simply nonsensical. From the bochs site:

Bochs is a highly portable free IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++,
that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86
CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS.

On the other hand, VMWare is a virtual machine implementation. Whilst Bochs can mimic an Intel processor on any platform to which it's ported, VMWare depends on being able to pass machine code directly to the native CPU without interpreting it, and therefore its performace is pretty snappy.

At least you can say appples and oranges are both round, but this 'review' takes the biscuit. Bochs will never "shape up nicely" in the way that the article expects it to because it's a fundamentally different piece of software to VMWare. Plex86 (formerly FreeMWare), founded by the lead developer of Bochs, would have been the Open Source analogy for VMWare, had its development not died off several months ago due to a terminal lack of developer interest.

Any Emulater or virtualization tool?

A software like plex86 could solve these problems. It scans the code before it is executed and can virtualize even ring0 code. AGP gets faster every day and could be used to emulate the shared ram of the xbox. I'm sure that it is possible to run X-Box games on a pc without full emulation.
But on the other hand I think it will much easier to run pc software on the xbox. The only thing missing is a real pc standard bios. A VGA mode is maybe missing but that shouldn't be a large problem. I think it will take less than a month before we will see the first screenshots of linux running on the xbox. Or it will never happend because kernel hackers don't want to touch anything made by microsoft.

The inevitable question is "Will IT want to manage my virtual PC too?" As for VMWare requiring admin privs, I have no idea about it--I'm a plex86 developer.

Unfortunately, vmware has gotten rather expensive, and plex86 probably isn't ready yet (please, if you can help the author of plex86 find a good job, preferably working on plex86, do so). But if you are willing to pay for Win2k and Win2k software, the cost of vmware is small in comparison.

Otherwise, you may be able to work on your own laptop...

Oh, if you are doing real-world Microsoft Windows development in Visual C++, a "locked down" environment is probably too constraining. If you are just developing algorithms in C++, or if you develop in Java, it's probably doable. But forcing people to use a specific set of tools is not exactly the way to keep developers happy.

i saw this comment, and i though, "well, what about plex86? " it was striving to be a free (LGPL) replacement for vmware, and it was mentioned on slashdot a few times, but it looks like the main developer was laid off from MandrakeSoft, and the project is in limbo right now...

i saw this comment, and i though, "well, what about plex86? " it was striving to be a free (LGPL) replacement for vmware, and it was mentioned on slashdot a few times, but it looks like the main developer was laid off from MandrakeSoft, and the project is in limbo right now...

Complaining on and on about how Company X won't provide Software X for Linux, followed (immediately upon release by Company X of Linux version) of complete deriding of that software (comparing its features to some previously created Linux software) is not good encouragement for other software companies looking into the possibility.

The only encouragement for commercial software companies looking into the possibility is the potential to make money from the sale of their software product. That's going to be any software company's burden to overcome if they're going to play in the Linux arena.

Linux users are naturally going to compare the proprietary software offering with open source alternatives. Some are naturally going to resist using the closed source product because they know what they'll have to give up if they do, namely some freedom.

Some software overcomes this burden and succeeds. I dare say VMware is presently in this position, providing the best hardware virtualization software available today. Perhaps Plex86 may one day shift the balance of power, in the Linux workstation market.

Most commercial software companies who introduce proprietary software in the Linux marketplace will naturally find a lukewarm response unless the value potential of their offering overcomes the existing culture.

Time to cough up some $ for windows license (all my machines are running Linux exclusively with the noble exception of one PalmOS machine :-))

Yep, and rip it open while running a modified version of Plex86.

Er.... no. That's just plain wrong.

VMWare, for the most part, runs x86 code natively on the processor. It traps and emulates some instructions, and scans executables before loading for the occasional non-virtualisable x86 instruction - The x86 PC-AT architecture is not fully virtualisable, unlike both many more modern architectures, and older archtectures that were better designed.

The x86 chip itself is a strange mixture of kludges, that have grown up over the past couple of decades. However, 486+ family chips can virtualise 8086 code, and there's "only" a "few" 80386+ instructions that the VMWare authors had to sacn out and deal with specially, so VMWare is NOT a PC emulator like bochs.

However, one also has to deal with device I/O, since none of the PC support chipset is customarily designed for virtualisation either - and this is what IS for the most part emulated in VMWare, hence the virtual BIOS, HD and gfx card.

For more information, consult the blurb about VMWare, and the documentation for Plex86, an open-source clone of VMWare

Supposing someone installs XP in a virtual VMWare, or Plex86 machine, and then cloned it several times.... Hmmm...

I think I'll just install IE6 on a Win95 VMWare machine in since I only need it for testing web pages :-)

As has been mentioned, Mandrakesofts donations page came about after numerous requests from the users. I for one am glad to see it -- I've used Mandrake since years ago, and until now I've never paid a cent for it. I love the distro and I would like some way to show it monetarily :-) But I wouldn't go out and by a boxed set because I wouldn't read the manual, I'd throw the box away, I wouldn't need support (if that's even included) and I know retailers probably make more than Mandrakesoft from these sales anyway.

Now the great thing about Mandrakesoft is that they hire lots of developers from many free software projects, like KDE, GNOME, PHP-Nuke, Plex86, Apache and many others. When you make a donation, you can mark those money for, say, KDE development. This way KDE will get better, KDE developers will eat, Mandrakesoft will save some dough and I can sleep at night.

In my opinion Mandrakesoft is heading in the right direction -- their way of income is a lot better than that of SuSE, which seeks to sell more boxes by making it extremely difficult to download their distro. And it's better than that of Red Hat, which charges for services such as automated software updates (which is included free with Mandrake).

Indeed, I think Mandrakesoft is discovering the future ideal way of making free software and still eat three meals a day. Their method is in many ways compliant with The Street Performer Protocol, in that users will pay up if and only if they actually like what they get.
--

There are several problems with VMWare (and projects like it, such as the really cool and free Plex86) that make it unsuitable as a gaming platform.

First of all, and possibly most important, VMWare doesn't support DirectX, making it useless for the vast majority of Windows games. I don't know if this is because the VMWare developers don't care about games, or if it's actually not possible to run DirectX in VMWare (it may not be possible for technical reasons, and 3D accelerator cards may not be possible to use either).

Second, because of the method of emulation used, VMWare and projects like it will always be slower than natively running the code.

Third, VMWare requires a copy of Windows in order to run Windows. TransGaming's free DirectX implementation, along with WINE, completely eliminates the need to buy Windows. This isn't really a problem now, because everyone has Windows, but maybe in the future...

Another alternative would be for plex86 or vmware to become part of the kernel. Then you could have a kind of 'switch personality command like on the old Sequent systems (you could choose bsd universe or system V). In this case you could say something like 'redhat ls -l' and the process would get forked in a redhat environment.

The NetBSD kernel modules are LGPLed - does this mean plex86 support will never be a standard part of the NetBSD kernel?

The classic "hello world" program in C can be ported to any OS. (Mac, Windows, etc.)

I generally agree with your remark about unix software being easily ported to other unix-alikes. At least for user-space things. For the most part.

Kernel space things may be much more difficult to port. You may be dealing with totally different API's. Or even different concepts, for an extreme example, such as kernel loadable modules, vs. VXD's, vs. Mac OS "Extensions", etc. (Using the term "kernel space" very loosly here.)

A bad program may, as you say, be unnecessarily be difficult to port. But a program difficult to port is not necessarily bad.

The question that has not been asked here is: how much of Plex86 is user-space? Doesn't it involve some Kernel trickery in order to achieve the virtualization? I got that impression from Kevin Lawton's paper here: http://www.plex86.org/research/paper.txt

Re-read the information on the Plex86 site.

What you wish for is not relevant as Plex86 is a virtualization, not emulation of the x86 platform. It is not intended to run on any other architecture, as that would be emulation, not virtualization.

Great illustration of difference between proprietary and free software. VMWare knowledge is not accessible while Plex86 is just one link away:

http://www.plex86.org/research/paper.txt (And is a very very interesting read)

Thanks for the interesting post, anyway

Cheers,

--fred

First, a big thank you for making Plex86 possible.

Now the question...

One thing that I find cumbersome with VMWare and Win4Lin (and the plex86 screenshot that I saw) is that you have to display the entire Windows9x desktop to run even a single application.

Even back in the days of OS/2 2.1, they had a way of displaying Windows application along with OS/2 applications in the same (OS/2) desktop. They did this with a special Windows video-driver which would "burn a hole" in the OS/2 desktop to reveal applications running on the Windows desktop "running behind" the OS/2 desktop.

Here is an example of a Win32 application running inside the OS/2 desktop, and another example. It's sorta like running Exceed (or WinXfree86) and having an X application display over your Windows desktop.

What I'm talking about is (IMO) different than running a Windows application through WINE, because (with plex86) the Windows application is running inside a (logically separate) virtualized machine.

Would you consider offering such a feature, or at least an I/O hook in plex86 so that it could happen?

Thanks

Here. Sigh.

Actually, Linux is a DOS App. I know, because Loadlin is a protected-mode program that runs Linux from DOS! DOS lets the program do whatever it wants. I mean, it's the running program, right?

Yeah, but you're expected to be able to return to DOS after playing the game. Which causes no end of annoyances... Saving the pointer to the INT9 handler, hmph.

Now there's a challenge for you: making LOADLIN return to DOS after you shut down Linux. It shouldn't be nearly as hard as something like Plex86, since you don't need to virtualize or anything, just save a bit of data for when you're finished.

Case in point: after removing my TV Card, my SB Live! card doesn't work at all. Under Windows, the card gets detected, and then the system locks. Hard. Under Linux, the drivers try to load, and then fail, but the system keeps going.

Ugh. I had a Hauppauge WinTV board, which you'd think would be pretty much guaranteed to work under Windows, right? Ha. It worked fine in Linux on the first try, but under a fresh Win98 with no other extraneous hardware, it would reboot 1 second after starting the TV display.

Incidentally, I don't use Windows at all now. Luckily, I'm not really a gamer, so I don't have the normal conflict of interest thing.

I like the design of RT-Linux, myself; I think a lot more could be done with a model like that.

Heh, lots of people are gushing over the possibilities of user-mode Linux. Linux -- it's a Web server, an ORB, an embedded system, and a mainframe, all in one!

--

the hardware described would be cool, but i havn't seen anything like it. (unfortunately!)

# cat .sig

now that Plex86 runs Windows apps, does anyone have a copy of Microsoft Bob? That way when you get tired of doing work and accomplising things, you have a cadre of animated assistants to make you feel superior...

Try:
vmware
Plex86
Basilisk

Basically anything that gets you out of X, which is exceptionally primitive, lacking as it does alpha blending, true type fonts, etc., and being useful only for people running software over a network.

I'm not trying to be rude, but if you're going to do graphic design work, you should use a graphics design tool - in other words not X, which is unsuitable - how could you present as work those ugly blocky fonts?

If you want to do anything I recommend a good set of tools - if you're doing cross-country driving I'd recommend a 4 by 4 vehicle - to use a cadillac would be silly, and if you're going to do graphic design work you should use a graphic designer's tool - a Macintosh or Windows.

The screen grab posted shows the ungodly hour of 2:13AM. Can we really trust code that was finalized at this time of day? What kinds of mistakes have slipped in due to sleep deprivation?

Yes, since bochs has been released under LGPL, I'm sure plex86 has merged some of bochs' code into their own. Read more about it here.

A little context doesn't hurt. http://www.plex86.org/info.phtml .

I'm wondering if anyone can comment on the performance of VMware (and the potential performance of plex86 one day). I used Bochs to run Windows 98, and the performance was awful. The specs on my machine are: AMD K6-2 450 MHz, 256 Mb RAM.
----

I wouldn't be very surprised if this license agreement only applies to vmware versions of win98+nt or winnt+2000 and does not apply to linux+win bundles.

Think about it:
1. If I want linux on win I can go for a umsdos based distrib or get lnx4win from mandrake which runs from an image and saves file permissions etc.
2. If I want win over linux; I am already a linux user; why not use Wine? or just dual boot to a win partition? a couple of scripts to dd the partition and restore it for multiple install testing. No performance hit, no svga problems, no fake peripherals in a virtual machine.

This is probably cements marketshare for vmware in msdn where developers need to cope with the plethora of different ms oses. Vmware is probably also concerned about plex86 eating into their win on linux market!