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Plex86 Boots Linux In Normal Mode
Kevin Lawton writes: "Plex86 just reached the
'Linux squared'
state. I just got plex86 running on a Linux Mandrake 7.1 host,
to boot an old RedHat 5.0 disk image file (installed with bochs
some time ago). CVS updates coming in the next few days. Next on the chopping block are the MS Windows OSen!
"
Cool. So now I can run Linux inside Linux inside Linux inside Linux inside Linux inside... :-)
Fun, fun, fun
A little context doesn't hurt. http://www.plex86.org/info.phtml .
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
If i am not mistaken, they are both written by the same people.. the diffrence between them is in their speed... Bochs emmulates an x86 chip on any hardware it will run on (say, on a Mac running PPCLinux or whatever). Plex86 uses the actual CPU in a virtualized invironment.... it requires real x86 hardware under it, but is much faster than emmulating everything as is done by bochs.
Does it
Support printers?
Support audio devices?
Support video modes other than text?
Provide graphical configuration?
Support accelerated display via DGA?
Support floppy drives?
Support ip through the host's adaptor?
Support serial ports
Support fullscreen mode.
Of course it doesn't. Vmware does all these things today. Not a year from now, or two years. Not just on linux. Buy a copy of vmware. They deserve your dollars, and you deserve their fabulous piece of software.
And no, I don't work for them
I do hope you realize that VMWare and plex86 will not run on a IBM mainframe since they do not emulate the CPU, they only emulate certain protected mode instructions, while letting the rest of the instructions run on the real processor. This is also why you can't run VMware in VMWare.
I still rememeber how, some years ago, OS/2 decided to overcome Windows. Unfortunately M$ did a smart move in time, by launching Win95. Most of OS/2 Windows emulation was based on 16 bit Windows. Besides, the mixed nature of Win95 (it has both 16/32 bit code) and its weird integration/embedding, made the transfer of Win32 code to OS/2 a nearly impossible task. During the years, it seems that IBM tried several times to recover from this blow. However M$ managed to smartly maneuver and avoid the danger. First by forcing IBM to accept its supermacy on market. Second by smartly destroing those who could help IBM to move OS/2 forward.
Today the situation is pretty different. First people don't wanna move from a classic Win32 basis, that has established deep roots. Most people use, for years, Win98/NT. Some have transferred to Win00, but this OS looks more as a continuation of old NT traditions. So, improvements are more superfluous than useful. The only good thing is that it is stable for a larger field of activies than Win98/NT.
In the mean time I have seen that M$ customers became quite conservative. The new great WinMe looks as the biggest M$ fiasco since th ill-famous DOS 4.0. Apart from this, we have to note that M$ does not promise any inovations in the short future.
Right now the Linux front presents three great achievements:
VMWare is working stable and fast on Linux.
Recently Wine started to launch such important apps like Word00 & Excel00
Now Plex86 seems set forward to start implementing Windows emulation on Linux
If nothing changes, than soon we may face the fact that te last M$ bastion will fall. If M$ does not have in its hat a new rabbit or a new OS implementation then it will surely loose ground. First by those who don't need anymore "two OS's in one hardware". Second becaudse many average users will be able to launch M$ soft on linux.
So time to start counting backwards...
I honestly consider this a good thing. Plex86 originally started as a vmware killer, and has grown quite a userbase. It is true that it's behind vmware by at least a few years, but you have to remember, that when the original vmware beta came out, it had a lot of bugs also. I remember using it for the first time, and quite frankly, i was quite impressed. Right now, in the state that plex86 is in, I'm even more impressed than when i first saw vmware. The reason being that it hasn't taken 3 years to get a working emulator. Now comes the big question: how badly do people want to have a "FREE" emulator? I would like to see more people work on this project, and maybe at one point in time, show microsoft that they can't always have the market by the balls. Sorry for this being so long, I just had a lot to say.
They also harass you with email quite a bit after you download their demo. I equate this to the mobs of harpies which descend upon you when you enter a clothing store. I'm impressed at what they've done, but I don't feel like giving them any cash at this point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It would be wonderful if any of the programs(VMWare or plex86) would be able to make use of the DVD player that is currently functioning as my overpriced CD-ROM drive. Even though my DVD troubles have yet to be solved, I do have to praise VMWare for it's ability to use the ports. Since there is no adequate software for loading mp3's onto a creative nomad or for linking to a ti calculator, VMWare has become a good friend of mine. IF plex86 were to add these features, I might consider switching. But VMWare was $100 well spent
bzzt. An apostrophe would be used with the possessive, as in "the OS' dominance", but not in this case. OSes is correct. IMHO.
Yes, despite the fact that the article states that it doesn't run MS Windows yet, and that nearly everyone who runs VMware on Linux uses it to run MS Windows, Plex86 is by an inexplicable mystery a viable alternative to VMware.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
What it does explain is why VMware doesn't run on the Alpha, Sparc, MIPS, ARM, PowerPC, etc.
If you run Bochs on another processor, you should be able to run VMware or Plex86 on that.
What's more, I receive tons of spam from Vmware, so they definitely DO NOT deserve my money. Long live Free software !
I bought Win4Lin instead, and I'm really impressed with it, it runs at nearly the original speed! As what most people want is a way to use the few Windows applications they have to run everyday, it's just great. If a couple of guys pretend they have to run Netware, WinNt and Win98 on the same machine at snail pace, that's fine for them, but as I have no masochistic tendencies, I will keep using the fastest solution.
And as someone said : Buy Win4LinThey deserve your dollars, and you deserve their fabulous piece of software ! ;>
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
The x86 is not actually virtualizable (since
there are instructions which do different things
at user and supervisor level, and which don't
cause an exception) so vmware has to scan the
code to be executed for non-virtualizable
instructions and replace them in some way.
This work well with well behaved OSes and
programs, but it breaks down when the
program being run inside vmware does
something unusual like scanning its
own code for non-virtualizable
instructions.
I've personally had great luck with GtkTiLink, which supports all calculators, gray and black link cables, and has a nice interface.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
- S.O.B. to install
+ a pretty kick ass OS
+ some of the best little utilities
+ the OS is pretty fast
+ compiler seems to produce some pretty fast executable code
+ compiles quickly compared with NT MSVC
+ a stable platform
+ really good process and thread scheduling
+ the scheduler is still better than the one in NT (which sucks @ss)
+ the memory management for threads is pretty decent too
+ Compared to dealing with the guts of NT, it is a pleasure to code to
+ the command line capabilities are great
+ the same machine running Linux will kick ass speedwise for most things
+ a (-SMALLER :( ) sector of the Linux community is wonderfully easy to deal with, well educated, and quite design savvy bunch
+ It's a good product
- that got buried by p*ss poor marketing
But with OS being an acronym, it's safe to say "OS's" with the term "operating system's" being correct. Sorry to give you the sytactical smackdown.
:)
Please see Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots
Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I have to agree. VMWare is one of the coolest pieces of software I run. No more quad-booting for me. And yes, I'm almost ashamed to admit, I run it under Win2000, not Linux.
My favorite features:
I keep a couple VM's around with Win98 and different browser versions so I can test web sites. I have a couple disk images of clean Win98 and NT4 installs so I can test installers. And of course I have a Linux image just so I can run nessus, which I can't seem to get working under OpenBSD.
Now if I could just get it to boot QNX.
Oh dear.
Green Monkey
"boots Linux in normal mode"
As opposed to safe mode?
Is "normal mode" anything like runlevel 3?
When WILL you people get it right? It's an OS that's JUST for HACKERS which is WHY it's pronounced LIGNUX!!!
:)
Yes, that's for "LIGNUX Inside GNU's Not UniX" => "LIGNUX Inside GNU's Not UniX Inside Gnu's Not Unix Not UniX" => "LIGNUX Inside GNU's Not UniX Inside GNU's Not Unix Not UniX Inside GNU's Not Unix Not Unix Not UniX"...
I leave the finished expansion to the reader.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
If the VM is really emulating the hardware, why have seperate support or debugging stages for different OSes? Why does it matter what software it runs; if it emulates the architecture 100% then it should run anything that would run on the architecture.
I suppose the two reasons I could think of are undocumented interfaces, and bugs in the software that make assumptions about bugs in the hardware. The console emulator's problem is pretty much explained by lack of documentation (most info is reverse-engineered) but on a fairly standard system like x86, why all the fuss?
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
If there really was some exotic x86 instruction sequence that VMware couldn't handle, it seems likely that one of the supported operating systems would have managed to use it.
Or use your brain and realize Plex86 is still a work-in-progress (and progressing at a rather nice speed) so it isn't meant to compare - yet. VMWare is a fine piece of software, and I use it sometimes when I really need to. But I persoannly don't use commercial software so I don't use VMWare on any of my machines and I wouldn't use Windows either. I am interested in using Linux to boot test copies of other kernels and FreeDOS etc but I don't give a freak about running crap like Windows. All the software I like runs under Linux anyway these days. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Buy VMware if you like. I bought a few copies. But I certainly feel under no moral obligation to give them my money, and neither, I think should anybody else. If you want to do a good deed, support Mandrake and the Plex86 project financially.
In any case, the only reason why this is so hard to begin with is because of limitations of the x86 and PC architecture. If the PIII were built to be virtualizable and the PC didn't have such a ridiculously messy set of hardware interfaces, none of this would be a big deal.
Personally, I have a lot less interest in helping out on the plex86 project than in learning and start contributing to the linux kernel sources (at the end of the day, a monopoly over an application has a lot less drastic consequences than one company holding a monopoly over the OS markets - eg. I don't mind if Quake IV remains closed source).
But why criticize the guys writing plex86?
Don't put other people off playing with plex86 - the fact that plex86 is behind vmware just means that they need all the more help if they are going to be succesful - even if that is just people running plex & reporting bugs.
I say good luck, to the guys out there writing plex86. I hope you succeed. The more good software in the world the better.
-
They deserve your dollars, and you deserve their fabulous piece of software.
Now are you sure you haven't been doing any PR work for M$?Read your Strunk and White, boy! Singular possessives ALWAYS end in 's, even if they end in s, unless they are ancient names. If they are ancient names, it is preferable to avoid the apostrophe altogether, and instead write "Foo of Bas".
Class's constructor.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
Maybe by the middle of next year or earlier they will have an actual 'released' beta version out.
Gee and I was just given a window box a few days ago. Oh well maybe I'll have to turn it into a solaris or freebsd box or another linux box. Or donate it ;-)
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I think you can basically apply the diagonalisation argument to show that it is impossible for code that is able to scan itself to be translated correctly 100% of the time.
Tho I'm not completely sure.
Wow! Is that true? This changes my perception of them entirely.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
There's an important category of users that doesn't use it to run Windows: kernel hackers. VMWare lets you run the kernel under normal gdb.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
A client program that scans and modifies other programs within the virtual machine is no different than any other piece of self-modifying code, and VMware obviously supports that.
The conclusion is that VMware does not provide a full virtual machine. It's not clear exactly what they left out and why. Another evidence of this is that they require you to tell it what client OS you're running. Although they do offer a choice for "other". It would be very interesting to know what they do differently based on the client OS choice, but I imagine that they consider that information proprietary.