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Layers Upon Layers: Plex86 Runs Windows95
John Roberts writes, quoting the Web page of Plex86 wildman Kevin Lawton: "
Plex86 now runs Windows95 on my Linux-Mandrake box, in full virtualization mode!!! That adds Windows95 to the plex86 project's previous list of guest operating systems which it can run: MSDOS,
FreeDOS, and Linux.
This is full virtualization mode.
The CVS server already contains my latest source code.
Here's a toast to all the people who have supported plex86
development... [klink, klink, sound of champagne cork popping]
Check out this
screendump." Woo Hoo! The cost of VMWare may have just risen a bit ...
Somebody used to have some screenshots of it working, but it seems that they're gone now.
Maybe this is a simplistic and not totally true statement, but, I believe 'under' can most easily be described as 'in a window'. So, if you're running Windows under Linux, Windows isn't taking up the whole desktop, you can minimize the little tyke. And, if Linux is running under Windows, you'll have a taskbar icon for it (or would that be a taskbar icon for Plex86 instead?)
That's the way I see it anyway.
Perhaps, All I want is something that can run IE "stabily" to test javascript cross platform.
However, most people that have never tried linux, but want to, are a little unsure about repartitioning their hard drives. Even dual booting is bad enough! Likely they wont spend time in linux. With VMWare they can run linux quickly and easily, without leaving the start menu.
Or the flip side.
A friend of mine does lotus notes development. He's got debian installed and boots up every morning, clicks "resume" and is back where he was the night before, shaving a minute or two off the windows boot time. As he gets mroe confident in linux he can do more and more tasks. He's hooked on links for example.
PErsonaly I wont be using either, as when my VMware licence finishes I'll get arround to getting another hard drive and running windows on a networked computer, using VNC, for no performance hit.
me too
Oh, and Mame in the corner too :)
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
you do _not_ need a copy of windows to run wine. You _can_ use your windows install, but you don't have to.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Why would MS care about people running windows under plex86/VMware, let alone try to break it. Whether someone runs windows in an emulated machine, or real machine, Micorsoft still (theoretically) gets the money for the license, to run windows under VMware/plex86 legally, you have to legally have a copy of windows to install in the VMware/plex86 emulated machine. Actually, come to think of it they probably *like* VMware and plex86, it makes people who would run linux only buy windows licenses.
No, the guys at MIT have their terms correct, the X server really is a server - it is a display server.
Just because you commonly use it to run xterms or whatever from another machine, on the machine you are currently at, it is equally possible to be sitting at that other machine, point your DISPLAY environment variable at another machine whose display you would like things to appear on, then run X apps from there. You have to set the X server's security setting to allow it first. People do this all the time for audio (going by the announcements on Freshmeat, anyway) - why not do this for display, too? The most obvious use would be for timetable screens in railway stations, etc.
And thought it was cheeky when I ran the Windows version of Williams's Arcade Classics (a set of arcade ROM's with an emulator) under OS/2!
:)
OS/2
"diagonally" running Windows
running an arcade emulator
on a non-Intel X86 chip!
So, does Mame32 run under Wine or Plex86? How about WABI?
Tastes Like Chicken
Nah use the Starfire Interface, it's still ahead of its time and would give users a simpler interface.
As Sun don't seem to make use of it, perhaps they could open source it ?
As for OS X its good but its still evolutionary NOT revolutionary, the best thing about it is that its based heavily on unix . The GUI is an improvement but it still relies on the WIMP metaphor.
Dammit even Microsoft have experimental 3D user interfaces being tested and are at least trying to design using new metaphors. Its only because Microsoft uses a pale bloated imitation of unix for their OS (NT/2000) that Apple is still in the running.
IIRC, this is how the later PC emulators worked on the Amiga. However, it was actually slower for some things than interpreters, mainly because of program dynamically modifying their own code (Doom being a case in point)
For one, it's a perfect way to debug web pages. I can start up VMware for Linux and preview the things I work on in Netscape/Linux, Netscape/Win98, and IE5 all at the same time. And when I fix the page, no nasty time wasted rebooting to see that the last fix I made broke the way the page appears in one of the above browsers.
I imagine that an OS in an OS is also useful for isolating viruses and buggy software too. Or would you prefer to try out that nasty new bug that flashes your bios and erases your partition table on your real computer?
I suggest that you check out the VMware site to see their propaganda on the issue. They had some good points the one time I actually read them. Some silly ones too, but that's PR for you.
Yeah, wine working well would NOT be appreciated, but I dont think theres really any legal action they can take, and changing dll's too much will break compatilibity with old windows software, so if wine does start to work well, they have a problem. (the past several releases have tended to crash X more than work on my system, so I think they will be ok for a little while longer)
DVD support
Not that that's ever stopped them before.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Yes it boots, but I've tried VMWare, and it runs great. HOw stable is plex86 running these OS's?
Anyone know how much memory vmware needs to run decently?
I have a redhat box w/ 128 sdram, is it enough to get a Win9X running?
If you've been lurking on the plex86 mailing list like me, you'll have noticed that there has recently been quite a bit of discussion about the video issue. 3D accel is the main thing here. The ideal situation would be to have a guest driver that tunnels OpenGL directly to a Mesa on the host... better still for the hardcore gamer, support to use a second video card exclusively for the guest. The latter is easy; someone is working on that right now. The former requires writing a Windows driver, and that's why I post. Anybody consider themselves a Windows driver guru? Anyone aspiring to be and want a chance to prove him/herself? Then hop on that mailing list and get talking.
:( (or if it is, it's not making much of a difference).
Of course another option is to emulate an existing card. 3DFX in software anyone? Well at least if you could get enough of the card to grab the OpenGL and pass it down to the native hardware, that would be enough. But I don't think there are quite as many people here who have an intimate knowledge of how their accelerated video card works. I know I don't because my card isn't accelerated
It's only natural that the same thing be finally done on microcomputers.
Back in (MS-)DOS days, Desqview did it pretty cleanly, too. But Windoze pretty well screwed up the whole scheme with it's hare-brained design.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Seriously, one wierd thing about vmware is that it is inflexible with the number of colors. Games that open up screens using DirectX won't work because of how vmware's "video driver" works. Anyone have any idea of this is just a fact of machine emulation, or a vmware-only thing for optimization?
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
The above comment about running Windows under Linux on a mainframe wouldn't work, due to incompatible instruction sets, but it brings up an interesting possibility:
Has anyone tried writing a complete virtual processor/virtual peripheral system that performs dynamic binary translation between instruction sets?
The canonical way of doing this - just running the program on an emulated processor with the desired instruction set - is hideously slow. You can't cross-compile the whole program, as parts of it will be inextricably bound to architecture, but you should be able to translate 99.9% of it to native code on the desired target platform. This would provide a vast speed boost over a purely emulated solution.
You could even design the system to perform cross-compiling and optimization of the new machine code incrementally. Much as with Transmeta's translation technology, you'd perform profiling on the fly to give translation/optimization priority to the sections of code used most frequently.
The advantage to this? I'm not sure, but among other things it would let me run Sparc binaries from the university servers on the x86 machine on the desk in my cubicle, or play MOO on the Sun boxen.
Has anyone tried writing such a monster, with or without the "incremental" bit? What was the end result?
Hi again timothy.
Note first that you don't _have_ to buy VMWare. Just do an infinite evaluation using different emails, or something else illegal *cough*keygen*cough*. Oh, speaking of which, I wonder what's letting me use IE to post this...
As for 98, NT, 2000, and ME... remember that plex86 is virtualizing an x86 processor, not an operating system (this is a major characteristic that distinguishes it from, say, WINE). So by "plex86 runs Win95", Kevin really means to say "plex86 supports enough of the x86 architecture that (at least most of) Win95's horrendously buggy code is able to run on it." BTW, Kevin is amazing. plex86 so far is almost single-handedly his creation. Once a bit more stuff gets filled in, subprojects will get spawned, and I hope to work on some myself if I get the time. But until then... I would suppose that donations are accepted... but he does get $$$ from Mandrake for plex86. I wonder if the next Mandrake release will include plex86 integrated.
VMware is great, and it also runs Windows NT. I got it to run Win98 with networking support, and it was quite fast (not fast enough for games, but fast enough for Office).
Plex will continue to evolve and get better, and this should contribute to _lower_ pricing for VMWare.
One way to settle the argument would be the real Anne Marie to post their /. ID on the (remnants of) educatedescort.com.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Run it in a VNC session.
/etc/rc.d/
I start several VNC session from
It wouldn't be hard to fiddle with some settings to the VMware machines get automatically started too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> For these reasons, I believe the WINE project is more important than either VMware or Plex86.
Well, windows is not the end-of-everything. Plex86 will give me the possibility to run OPENSTEP. Or the HURD.
But, yes, for runnning windows *applications*, Wine is probably better...
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
And am I the only one who thinks you'd be a great Slashdot interview?
Thanks
I've been using explore2fs for quite a while. It's a Delphi program, in Windows Explorer, and although it's a little slow, it gives full read and experimental write access to all partitions on all drives on your computer. Open source, too!
This space for rent.
But also, unless things have changed in the terms of the divorce settlement, I believe MS still has the option to release 1 new version of OS/2
The key part of the IBM-MS Divorce settlement was that both companies shared all rights to co-developed OS technologies. That meant that they both owned full rights to DOS 5.0, Windows 3.0, and OS/2 1.3. This had some implications:
+ NT uses quite a few bits and pieces from OS/2.
+ As late as 1997 at least, I saw a brand new copy of MS OS/2 1.3 being used in an embedded setup (voice mail system).
+ IBM only had to pay MS $11/copy for Windows 3.1, according to the antitrust trial testimony. This deal ended when Win95 shipped.
+ Genuine IBM DOS is still of cource for sale.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
No, it is simple. The cardinality is almost always one or more clients attach to one server.
One or more X clients (apps) attach to one X server (a single display).
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Sorry.
Doesn't sound all that different from Linux kernel modules if you ask me. It's even allowable to distribute binary only modules for device drivers and whatnot. The only real difference is that in Linux you can't insert modules into the running kernel unless you are root.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Yhis is not like WINE though, that tries to reimplement the windows API on Linux. THis is a x86 emulator.
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Can you please list some design flaws?
I'm not an X guru but I can try:
Advantages with current design: network transparency. Current solution to design flaws: make everything (font antialiasing, alpha, bezier, color conversion etc) in prosessor and send result as bitmap. Do you really think this is the solution?
_________________________
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
Well, hopefully it'll end up being more efficient in the future. I'm trying to set up a test 'hard drive' to boot right now, and I'm using Bochs to do some of it just because it's faster on my new computer.
(which is amazing, considering how *slow* Bochs used to be; Plex86 appears to be that slow at the moment, but I still have to do more testing...)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
If this is a serious question (not just a troll):
I see he posted at 12:29 AM. Trolls don't come out until after 2 AM, so it wasn't a troll.
Price up/down, go study economics. Speaking of which, I'm sure that with all of the contributions of VMware's hefty price-tag (and in Australia US$100 => lots *grin*), that the speed of development and addition of enhancements will flow a lot quicker. What are you doing to support this open-source project??
Acutally, the really clever thing you could do with that would be launch msword as your shell for windows if thats all you wanted to do with it, and cut down on overhead even more (as well as space). Sorry just my brain in overload mode in the middle of the night, need cigarette.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Sounds like binfmt_misc to me. From /usr/src/linux-2.2.14/Documentation/Configure.help :
Kernel support for MISC binaries
CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC
If you say Y here, it will be possible to plug wrapper-driven binary formats into the kernel. You will like this especially when you use programs that need an interpreter to run like Java, Python or Emacs-Lisp. It's also useful if you often run DOS executables under the Linux DOS emulator DOSEMU (read the DOSEMU-HOWTO, available in ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO). Once you have registered such a binary class with the kernel, you can start one of those programs simply by typing in its name at a shell prompt; Linux will automatically feed it to the correct interpreter.
Look at related past scenarios: VirtualPC and SoftWindows for the Mac do essentially the same thing (with minor performace issues), and Microsoft doesn't seem to mind them. WMWare hasn't been hassled by Microsoft, to the best of my knowledge, either.
But yeah, I'm sure Plex86, which is probably riddled with bugs and compatibility issues at this point, is going to scare them into litigation. Makes sense to me.
Sun's CVS doesn't want to cooperate here at work. Where can I find a tarball?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
CICS is not an operating system. It is a program that runs under operating systems like MVS, VM (not sure), AIX, and (once upon a time) OS/2.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I hope you all see the irony in hundreds of Linux geeks, working their ass off to be able to run their favourite hate OS. /Amused
Go figure ,->
As long as you can play "The Incredible Machine", nothing else matters!
:-(
Anyone else remember that? Anyone got the full version of the game? lost mine several hard disks ago
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
"Win2001 ain't done 'til Plex86 won't run."
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
95 crashes way more than 98 on every machine I have ever upgraded to 98 from 95. I used to get a BSOD on this one machine almost every day, but with 98 it was very stable as far as any windows box goes.
But I hate them both and haven't used windows in months, and don't plan to any time soon unless I am forced to for work or something.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
That should be plenty enough. I've run Nt4, along side a Mac emulator (BasiliskII) and both ran decently. For quite a while I would just minimize the running VM, and continue my regular work in linux w/o blinkng. (i configured the vm to have 64meg of memory, i believe vmware itself uses about 30-40 meg)
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I just don't like how resource efficient my linux install is. If only there was a way to introduce bloat.
Oh, well. I'll keep trying
www.ridiculopathy.com
You're right, there is source for the vmmon, vmnet, and vmppuser modules. Audit, anyone?
I've been trying another program kinda like this called win4lin. (I'm not sure on all the tech specs)
you can install windows within your linux system, and run most apps, (again no directx)
seems to work pretty dam good, and it's cheap.
it's found here: http://www.netraverse.com/
metalgeek
metalgeek
windows, just another pane in the glass
I know about this. :-) The reason I didn't make a reference to it is because it's an obvious solution, but still doesn't satisfy the point I made in my post. It still calls on an emulator to do the job.
What about Whistler? Whistler has support to run apps in compatability mode using Win95/NT4 API's. They do care about not breaking old Windows apps, but if they make big changes... they can save themselves.
Forget VMWare. If all you want to do is run Win9x w/ Office like apps, try Win4Lin. It's 1/2 the price of VMware/Plex86, and so far, I've got it running Office2k(w/ Outlook to an Exchange Server), Project2k, McAfee AV/Vshield, and EasyZip. I can surf w/ IE, and print via LINUX printers(using windows drivers). File storage uses the UNIX tree structure (accessable through LINUX)-- no big-virtual drive.
So far, the only thing it can't do is MS Networking (browse fileshares, access resources, log into domains, and etc.). It also doesn't have Sound, and it can't play DirectX games. It also only supports Win9x.
I'm SUPER impressed with it. (Acutally, McAfee blew me away!
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Does plex86 support running the guest OS off a raw partition, or is a virtual disk required? There are two reasons I'd like to see raw partition support implemented:
I know Bochs was able to use raw partitions. Has this support been ported over to plex86, or are plans in the works?
Also, does/will plex86 support transparent network translation the way VMWare does. This is absolutely critical for me.
--
This is a bank so I have a lot of legacy programs that are Windows, DOS, etc. and I love the flexibility to test and run multiple OS's so I can move the appropriate system and OS into place. I'm not saying that Win2k is better than Linux, BSD, etc. but my choices where either Win2k or NT4 (from the top) so you tell me which is the better choice for that. Our mainframe is Unisys and they are pushing NT/2000 for everything and a lot of the software solutions are for NT/2000 and will soon be 2000 only. I will continue to use *nixish solutions whenever possible and as long as they continue to fit the needs.
I knew someone would bring that up, but you mentioned the point that I would respond with. There should be some authorized user (ie root) intervention before privileged code is run.
A user program like the Sims should simply not be allowed to execute privileged code. My one year old should not be able to crash my Linux box by banging on the keyboard as long as he is not running as root.
-tim
the distribution of wine that comes with the corel wordperfect office 2000 for linux suite has a compleat set of dlls that run a bunch of other programs very, very well. i've used it to run winamp, winamp, and winamp. :)
no, seriously, the project is now mature enough that a 'real' version of the windows runtime is not necessary, though helpful.
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
Some sort of source code for the necessary kernel modules is provided with VMWare; I've never run a kernel for which a pre-compiled binary was available, but the config script compiles versions which match my kernel without a hitch (2.2.x, at least)
Why are people so impatient!! I've just read through all the comments and there are so many that seem to be asking for stability and other OS's. One thing at a time! It's only just running Win95 and already everyone wants it to do everything, and be stable to boot (pun not intended). I think we should really hand it to the plex86 guys. Anyone who has read their paper on virtualisation will see it looks like a complete nightmare. I'm hugely impressed they've got this far so fast. Of course we'll all look forward to the day that it runs Win2k/Win* with all the bells and whistles (or perhaps many slashdot readers won't...:), but that is for the future.
For now, congratulations guys!
MAME will probably never run Windows, for the simple reason that it exists to emulate arcade games. However, MESS, a console/computer emulator based on MAME, might do it someday; it already emulates a PC with CGA or MDA graphics.
Look at the time on the screen shot...for most programmers, the "day" is just beginning :-)
Fat32 ran just fine in 95 (arguably more efficiently than in 98, just like everything else) just not in the first release. I've installed Windows 95 onto fat32 partitions many times before, not using OSR2. As far as hardware support, the only advantage that 98 has is slightly better USB and slightly better IRQ sharing. The other 95% of what 98 has most people don't want, especially since 90% of what 98 has that 95 doesn't is new bugs. I don't use IE integration and personally don't see any truely useful purpose for it that even remotely justifies the performance and reliabiliy hit. Even on a modern machine, removing IE integration provides a considerable speed increase, and slower machines (especially 100mhz/32MB RAM) show a tremendous benefit. Personally, I ran 98Lite which gives the core of 98 (slightly more efficient and functional than 95, and lets you install newer M$ software that claims to require newer 98 features) while using the 95 shell. I could read 8G partitions in Windows 95 Explorer, saved 8M hardware RAM (given the horribly inefficient use of memory in Windows 9x, this does make a difference, especially since this never seemed to get swapped). This approach is slightly faster than 95, and hella faster than 98, and usually only crashed when Windows ran out of "system resources" which is purely an annoying architectural limitation in all Windows but NT/2000 that will not improve in the least between machines with 8M and 2G of RAM. BTW, there were ways to make the original 95 run with FAT32. Of course, if you were comfortable running with two partitions or more, and didn't face severe cluster waste (few people actually did) then you would find much better speed in FAT16. I still use fat16 for everything except my Windows 2000 partition (NTFS) and my dedicated Documents partition (fat32, just for size.) Everything else, including swap partitions, two games partitions, and a windows 98Lite partition (just for running games) are Fat16 for speed. It would be nice if EXT/2 was supported in Windows, since it's faster than anything Windows is capable of using (aside from arguments for journaling, but those have been invalidated by ReiserFS and the upcoming EXT/3). I know it's a long post, I need to work on brevity. I just get POd by people that actually think that Microsoft has done anything useful since Windows 95 for the mainstream user, not that NT was all that good either (Where Windows 2000 is now, at least under the hood, NT should have been at five years ago. UNIX was there ten years ago.)
See subject
Since when did you need graphics to do system administration. BeOS or Win2k for the desktop, and unix for the server, but not X, no no no.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the best bet is going to be doing an OpenGL tunnel for the time being. Trying to emulate something as complex as a video card (and then coming up with GDI drivers for Windows to use for that emulation) is going to be a bear to do and most likely be evil slow.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
you could run a whole slew of other operating systems under Linux
I'm somewhat confused about what plex86 actually does. On one hand it's mentioned that Windows and Linux are two of the operating systems that can be run under plex86, but a few other people have mentioned running Windows "under Linux" using plex86. Which is it? Do you run Windows and Linux simultaneously under plex86 (in which case Windows is not running "under Linux" any more than Linux is running "under Windows") or do you run Linux natively and then use plex86 to run Windows under Linux? If so, could you reverse it, running Windows natively and using plex86 to run Linux under Windows?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Troll. I started this thread, explaining(simply) what the differences between WINE and plex86 are. I got my first computer when I was four; my first programming language was 16-bit X86 assembly.
I haven't kept up the skill, and my memory has degraded, but I certainly know what I was talking about. Stop being such an asswipe.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
IIRC, it actually ran a full copy of Windows 3.1, down to ProgMan and friends, or so the screenshots on sun's site (and the experience of my Solaris-using friends) says.
Also consider that it ran on Solaris on SPARC.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Apart from terminology how is a ring 0 VxD diffrent from a kernel loadable module? Sure you need to be root to load one, but it is putting code into the kernel that gets executed on the bare metal in ring 0...
I can confirm this. A full copy of Windows 3.1 ran inside of the WABI environment. It ONLY would run Windows 3.1 and only provided drivers for Windows 3.1. As I recall, it did the install for you, but it's been a while.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No it won't. That's the beauty of the protocol, and my whole point!
You continue to miss the other point that is being made! I could care less about the relative efficiencies and portability of X against VNC/Citrix/etc.. What I care about is the common path, which is a frame buffer tightly coupled to a bus close to the CPU. Penalizing that path is generally wrong. No matter what you do there will most likely be an order of magnitude, or more, speed difference between a tightly coupled video subsystem used for high performance graphical applications and your network connected video display!
I understand you claim that there are faster access methods. These faster access methods are inappropriate for photo manipulation programs (which require proper color correction) DP programs which require accurate scaling and font rendering. The list goes on, quake isn't the only high performance video related application and frankly X sucks for anything but what it was designed for, which is providing network display connectivity for a basic GUI. Even there it falls short because of its low level view of how graphics subsystems behave. Having to fight a war to get proper antialiased fonts in a heterogeneous network environment is nearly impossible with X even though it was designed for such an environment.
Install a Windows app under Windows, and it populates the 'Start' button.
Install a Windows app under Plex86, VMWare, Win4Lin and each time you want to use that app you have to switch to another window or turn on the other operating system just to have the chance to click that damn Start button.
To me, it's no big deal...but to a few non-geeks I've talked to as well as a few Uber-geeks, it's the only concern; is it exactly like running the same app under Windows?
It can be. The good folks at Codeweavers are working on a user interface that automatically populates the KDE and Gnome menus, allowing novices to install thier own software. Very slick -- and a critical safety blanket that can tempt the novices over to Linux let alone to other *NIX.
At this point, the pre-release is available for download but Wine itself isn't yet a 1.0 release...so many apps might be easy to use if they can be installed.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Well, they have Samba for that. I've successfully mounted my friends' shared mp3 directories with Samba and used them as /mnt/joesmp3s for example. I'd imagine once you did that, you could get Win4Lin to recognize it as part of your hard drive....
grep -ri 'should work'
Well, wouldn't that mean you could ONLY use word? At least use a small program that can launch other things. like say.... command.com :)
Don't count out VMWare just yet. They have an amazing product that does a lot more than just run a guest OS - it provides complete network integration, cool suspend/resume functionality, and other nifty tricks. They are one of the few proprietary software packages that I think is actually worth the money they ask.
Still, I'm glad to see a free replacement coming into maturity. I am in programmer-awe of anyone that can achieve what these guys have done.
didnt plex86 and bochs merge? bochs could run win95 a LONG time ago --> http://www.aphroland.org/screenshots/bochs/ (those screenshots are from 1998) of course it was very unstable..but it did run !! -- aphro
I know this might sound odd.... Has anyone tried to have just a "manager OS", that's sole purpose is to run other x86 OSes? It sounds silly, but my idea is just to run it and drop some program into the guest OS that 'distracts' the OS system so that it can manage hardware, etc. Maybe drop in a piece of hardware to help. Huh... that didn't even make sense.... wait, alright, who secretly switched me to decaf? Prepare to die. 'I came to bring the pain...'-Method Man
You can now emulate your computer using your computer(or 'virtualize,' whatever). The important part here is that you can run the emulater in multiple instances. Oh, and running Windows is pretty important for the mainstream too, I suppose.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
FAT32, perhaps? Partitions >2GB with reasonable cluster sizes are a Good Thing, and Win95 didn't implement FAT32 (well, pre-OSR2 Win95 didn't anyway).
I'll allow that if you already had Win95 OSR2.x, IE4 and a few other downloads would get you 95%+ of the way to Win98, but there were more than a few things (FAT32 being the most significant) that Microsoft never saw fit to make available to people running the original Win95.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
It works quite well for some applications, but not as well for the Amiga games, which were really exploiting the processor and hardware to begin with and do not lend themselves to easy analysis/translation. I don't suppose I need to mention that this is basically what Transmeta does in hardware....
~wog
The problem with the Sims and the VxD is that the currently available copy protections are too hard to emulate, since they use tricks like VxDs, hardware registers, timing tricks, etc., which WINE just cannot handle easily.
:)
Fortunately there are ways to disable the copy protection, look for 'unsafedisc' or similar on www.gamecopyworld.com. (Heck, it is even legal, since you own a copy
That just leaves us (WINE) to implement enough of DirectX7, but this is not a huge problem.
- Marcus
If plex86 runs win95, how far away is it from running win98 (especially win98SE)? I'm sure I'm not the only slashdot user that has no clue about the differences between 95 and 98, besides the obvious ones.
Oh, and congrats Plex86 team! You did one hell of a job.
I've been using VMware to "do the windows work I need to do with the stability of Linux" and I'm thoroughly pleased. USB support + some speed improvements would be great, but all in good time.
Yes. Plex86 is a Linux-programme. It let's Windows run on your processor (so you'll need a x86) by emulating the parts of the processor which it cannot access because Linux uses those parts. As the guy in the first8 post already pointed out: a simple addition can easily be run but a context switch will have to be emulated because it would fuck up the native OS (Linux) if you could, but you cannot even access such instructions since they're only accessibly from Kernel code (this is in the architecture of the x86).
0x or or snor perron?!
I've gotten several blue screens of death when using VMware. Then I reboot the virtual machine, and Windows begins a scandisk. Just like the real thing! At least when it's in a virtual machine like this you can just minimize it and do something else.
-Justin
Its ok to lurk around slashdot, just like in the Usenet and IRC....
:)
Ok, it's definitely cool Plex86 runs Windows and stuff, but how does its speed compare to Win4Lin? On my PC Windows runs under Win4Lin even faster than in native mode.
For most tasks, I find Win4Lin to be just enough Windows (maybe too much). On one hand, it requires owning a copy of Windows (ick), and only supports up to Win98 SE (no NT or 2000 support -- not yet anyway). Also, there's no decent way AFAICT to enable Network Neighborhood access transparently; you need to specify a mounted Samba partition. (If I'm wrong, please tell me!)
Other than that, I find Win4Lin to be not only quite zippy, but also less of a headache than freeware. (Watching the BSOD occur in an X Window is a scream.)
I'd be very interested in a comparison of the two myself..
.sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"
".sig,
".sig,
> [OSX] is an improvement but it still relies
> on the WIMP metaphor.
OSX has harnessed the power of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles? Maybe I haven't been giving Macintosh enough credit. Quite an R&D team there!
--
#19845
So anyway, if you Plex your muscles whilst drinking WINE, will your machine explode? That's what I've been wondering.
And for those of you who don't speak insane (such as the above): Stability? Anyone? I'll admit, I'm a bit conservative - so if it ain't stable, and I'm not developing (aka bug-testing, I'm no programmer), then I don't want it. Plain and simple... not stable - not on my machine. And, yes, I know that stability can be a rather subjective thing, with many qualifiers - its stable so long as you don't do this, this, this, or especially this.
Just a crazy freak wondering out loud...
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Hmmm... now I can run Windows95 on top of Linux... hmmm... Why exactly is this a good thing?
-Linux can now port Windows apps better, and draw in a larger userbase
Um, no? Linux is just catching up with Windows 95, as most applications are moving either to ME or to 2000. ME is horribly complex (3x size of 98), and 2000 is a completely different kernal. And 2000 seems to be the long term player for Microsoft. Plus, 95 just sucks. No Windows 98 user would go back to 95 just for increased stability (I never thought that I would have the option, though...:).
-Now you can play Windows games under Linux!
No. You can't. Well, you can play some, but slowly. Windows games fall into three catagories: DOS games that Windows runs in dos-boxes, Windows games that do software rendering, and Windows games that use propriety Microsoft stuff in order to run. Now, this can't do the dos-box games (I think..) because they do direct hardware access. It can't do the propriety Microsoft stuff, because that's propriety Microsoft stuff. Finally, it won't be able to do the software rendered games very fast, because the requests are getting filtered on five levels: Game, Windows API, Windows lower-GUI, Plex86, and then the Linux Kernal. Damn, and you thought three layers was slow!
So, with that said, why are we doing this again, instead of concentrating on Win2000?
MS may care because people may be running their existing copy of Windows, on the existing partition it is installed in. So MS makes no additional money.
More importantly, people may be running Windows under Linux strictly as a migration tool. And this is the much larger reason why MS may care.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
> true, then I won't shed any tears for sales they lose to Plex86.
Sigh.
Obdisclaimer: I work for VMware, I don't speak for them, believe what you want to believe, etc.
Kevin Lawton started those rumors, possibly accidentally. They are quite untrue, as Kevin himself probably realizes. If bochs is such a great starting place for making a virtual machine monitor, how come Kevin himself has had such trouble doing it?
The complete story, as I understand it: a few years ago, Mendel Rosenblum, a professor at Stanford, was looking for a platform to teach an operating systems course on. In order to evaluate Bochs, he asked Kevin for a free evaluation copy, which Kevin graciously supplied. Mendel ultimately decided against Bochs, in favor of SimOS.
A completely unrelated fact about Mendel Rosenblum is that he has been doing fundamental research on making virtual machine monitors for "unvirtualizable" platforms for years. See, for example, Disco, a VMM for the mips architecture. Rosenblum and some of his graduate students had an idea for making a VMM for i386, and VMware was born about two years ago.
Once VMware came out, Kevin was an enthusiastic user. You can still go onto our public NNTP server and see Kevin helping out other users of VMware. He eventually decided he wanted an open source VMware, and started recruiting folks on the VMware newsgroups. He then started telling stories of the form: "A couple years ago, I gave a source license for Bochs to Mendel; now he's formed VMware... Hmm, strange...", intending to leave the impression that VMware "stole" Bochs.
This is nonsense, and you don't have to take my word for it. It's nonsense for fundamental technical reasons. It's as if RMS said, "Hmm, a few years ago, I gave the source for a C compiler to Sun, and a few years later they come out with Solaris.... Hmm..." It's just a non-sequitur. CPU emulators and virtual machine monitors are different kinds of software. I realize that from the end-user perspective, VMware and Bochs appear similar: they both end up as PCs in a window. But they are unrelated in terms of fundamental technology. I'm sure at this point in developing plex86, Kevin probably realizes this, which is why he doesn't insinuate that VMware is somehow based on Bochs as often as he used to circa one year ago.
You must be kidding. Programming at 2 am is THE mark of true geekdom. Now if the screenshot had some coffee stains it would be perfect.
That way I can run linux on my x86
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
"If you don't like it, don't use it."
It's already opted how you can make "completely" secured virtual servers with this, use the advantages of Solaris together with those of Linux, etc. Another great use should be Linux advertising: now you could run "Linux for Windows" without even having to leave Windows, or run your favorite games in Linux.
Everyone is entitled the right to have his own projects, whether they're useful or not. Actually I think that every project *does* "make the current OSes better", because every project is the "killer app" for yet another group of people, no matter how select.
So the attractive thing about Linux is not that it has one "killer app", but that it has "for everyone his own killer app", a.k.a. choice and variety. You can't get that better.
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
--
We need: user@foo ~$ ./notepad.exe
Actually we have that.
Install wine, and
echo ':windows:M::MZ::/usr/bin/wine:' >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
echo ':windowsPE:M::PE::/usr/bin/wine:' >/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc_register
The wine package in Red Hat Powertools 7 does this automatically.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
If you had a Windows app that allowed Linux to run within a window (I think there is software out there that already allows this), and the colors looked all strange in KDE, wouldn't you be surprised as well?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'll explain some differences in between plex86 and WINE(which may seem obvious to some, but is a valid question for most).
WINE is replacing all the shared libraries that a regular Windows system would use. So, WINE isn't emulating Windows itself - it's really a compatibility layer.
WINE does a lot more, but that's what it boils down to.
Plex86 is what's loosely called a "virtualizer". You'll need Windows installed(to run Windows), or whatever other operating system plex86 is to use.
When Plex86 runs Windows, Windows is actually runing on the bare metal, for the most part. Plex86 makes it possible to run two operating systems at once by trapping certain instructions that the guest operating system(in this case, Windows) tries to execute. If Windows tries to say, add one plus one, it'll go to the processor without problems; but if Windows tries to get raw access to all available memory, Plex86 will trick Windows into thinking that it has "all" the memory, when it really only has what Plex86 has set aside for it.
This approach has up-sides and down-sides:
Good:
When Plex86 has become more mature, Windows and other guest operating systems will run at near-native speeds.
Since the framework would be in place, you could run a whole slew of other operating systems under Linux, instead of just Windows(great for debugging, since you have total control over what the guest operating system sees and does).
Bad:
Well, you have to have the operating system installed. With WINE, most of the functionality needed will eventually be completely re-written under Linux.
If Plex86 isn't extremely careful about what instructions the guest operating system is allowed to execute, you could end up with a really screwed-up system.
If you think this is all great and good, but you want it NOW, there is a commercial plex86-like program, it's called Win4Lin, and is available at www.win4lin.com . I'm not plugging them - until plex86 is ready, that's what I'm forced to use(and also forced to use an outdated kernel because of it).
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I use VMWare for exactly the same reason, running my webserver+RDBMS under linux, and testing pages in a variety of browsers under both linux and Win98. By using a bridged virtual NIC as well, I can also test remote client sites from my VMWare window using Win98/MSIE while still running Linux.
When I got this laptop from Dell, I just installed Linux (which recognized everything except the soundcard, which I've not bothered to try to fix) then re-installed Win98 within VMWare and I was set!
At home I've got an old Windows box I use, with an Xserver, and a "headless" Linux box so don't use VMWare.
Folks I work with take care of testing with Mac/MSIE...
An open source alternative is exciting.
I wasn't aware of the trick of using Wine on a vmware disk image. That sounds interesting, I'll have to give it a try.
The nice thing is that each of these boxen get the advantage of having somewhat fault-tolerant hardware. The memory in the host is ECC, there are 3 power supplies, redundant disks, hot-plug PCI, etc., that if implemented in each of the 18 separate servers, would cost an order of magnitude more. In effect, the incremental cost of adding a fault-tolerant server is basically the cost of the ram.. and a little cpu.
Of course, if the host goes down, it means that you'd better get it up damned fast. :)
My system usually sits with a load average around 0.50 to 1.50, and the servers (some NT, some Linux, and a solaris x86) are responsive enough, that most people don't even know they're virtual.
I'd recommend giving this a shot to anyone who needs a lot of hosts (for security purposes), where each host is only mildly CPU or I/O intensive.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I am afraid I am the real Anne Marie--just go read the article below. Let me try again . Read this article if you want sex, slashdot and linux all in one. Anne Marie
...but they stopped the beta program and removed the OS/2 code from the final 2.0 release, supposedly because it conflicted with other functionality in VMWare. Apparently they've not learned about "configuration files" yet. :-(
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Know if it runs OS2, or BeOS? I'm saying this simply as an exercise, its funny that we immediately attempt to get windows on this thingy before anything else. Well, Microsoft did write OS2, but that's beside the point, alright!!??
Anyways, its wicked cool, and I hope to see more. It'd be cool to see something like BeOS run in there, in fact that would make my day.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
One problem is, virtual machine emulators are generally pretty clunky, slow, and reinvent a lot of hardware access that should otherwise be done directly.
For these reasons, I believe the WINE project is more important than either VMware or Plex86.
Don't get me wrong, I think Plex86 is a great project and virtual machines have many uses...
But if you're a Linux user who wants to run Windows apps for one reason or another, or if you're a Windows user who wants to use Linux but are bound by Windows apps, then you need a better solution. Something smeamless. Something lower in the OS that will make executing Win32 binaries as easy as ELF.
Currently, I don't think this is possible. We've got a long way to go, and it may be a while before Linux users will accept a, say, /lib/win32-xxx.so, for example. What I'm really getting at here is, we need focus on assimilation. We need something that acts like it's native. Putting VMware, Plex86, or even WINE in the process, creates a jarring effect that still is insufficient for mainstream use.
We need: user@foo ~$ ./notepad.exe
security, yes, but security through obscurity. VMWare is highly complex, and closed source, and you've no idea whether there are buffer overruns or other exploitable vulnerabilities in there. I'll bet there are.
Despite the sentiment here, the client/server model is NOT a problem, in fact it is quite good, even for local display. Properly done client/server with a stream-like interface will VASTLY reduce context switches and is far easier to implement on multiprocessors. It should also be much easier to migrate the work to hardware accelerators. Though faster due to the reduced context switches, the client/server model does have a problem with latency, but in my opinion latency is an additive element in speed, while context switches are multiplicative, and thus as machines get faster the pain of latency is reduced far faster than the context switches. Also latency is unavoidable in network applications anyway so we should design systems to allow it.
Where X blows is the horrid rendering model. Your comments are very accurate, the current "solution" that all those graphics libraries use is to render a bitmap locally and send it. This completely destroys the whole point of the client/server and makes the sent data so huge that direct rendering makes a difference and is becoming a design requirement. It is insane that we are forced to link gigantic graphics libraries that are bigger than all that stuff would be if put in the server and that if you run 10 programs you have 10 copies of those libraries and their data, rather than one in the server!
Another problem is the huge number of badly designed X calls that require synchronous communication to the server. This replaces the "zero" context switches needed by a well-designed client/server with *two* context switches, reducing the performance to that of older NT, and reducing it to half that of NT when the graphics are in the kernel. Actually it is far worse than NT as there are *more* synchronous things than Windows has, despite the fact that the designers of original Windows did not lose anything for syncrhonous calls.
I wish people would stop trying to chuck the client/server and attack the real problem: We should scrap the entire rendering system and the current gc's and make a new type of X gc:
The GC would contain the display connection and current window and would be per-thread implied, like OpenGL GC's, so that drawing functions do not need any arguments other than the values actually used by that function.
Scrap colormaps and visuals! When you create a window, you can request any color (as a 32 or 64 bit number) and the server can figure out how to do it on the display. To run old xlib programs there would be an emulator, it would claim the X server provides a single truecolor visual.
Merge OpenGL completely. You should be able to draw OpenGL into any window, in sync with any new drawing operations.
Simple support of multiple buffers and overlays through the same gc. You can set the gc to draw into any layer, and there is a command to flush all changes from one layer into another. The back buffers are created when first used.
Real fonts support. Fonts are selected by a simple text string, ie "Helvetica". Arbitrary 2-d transformations of the font (perhaps 3d perspective too) and antialiasing, and UTF-8 support as the *ONLY* encoding it accepts, and every character ALWAYS draws no matter what the current font is (there is a 16x16 bitmap of every unicode character that is used if the font does not provide anything else).
Easy, programmer-friendly image support. Draw a image of 8-bit/color or 16-bit/color with RGB or RGBA through an arbitrary 3-D transoform. Alpha compositing with correct gamma math above whatever is already in the window.
And tons more. This is not particularily hard to implement. It's not easy either. But we really really need it.
Very true. I've noticed when I say anything everyone will agree with my karma goes up but if I an express an opinion outside the flock my karma goes down. It doesn't matter how valid or invalid my posts are. I've always wondered if it was just me or if everyone is moderated that way.
Also it seems people near the top of the list get moderated a lot more than the people further down, especially for positive points. Would be interesting to see what solutions there could be for that problem.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I am glad to hear that Plex86 (FreeMWare) is having great successes. I am currently a VMware and WINE user and look forward to having other choices available.
One of the great (and under-documented) features of VMWare is the vmware-mount.pl script that allows the user to mount a vmware disk image as though it were an ordinary directory on the U*ix filesystem.
I have had great sucess using this scipt and my vmware disk file (nt4.dsk) with the WINE 'emulator'. I have my wine.conf file pointed to where I have mounted the disk image (/mnt/vmware).
I personally feel that emulating Windows under U*nix is a good thing, it allows people like myself, who only have one machine and hesitate to reboot just to use a small application, and additional level of flexibility.
Now, does Plex work with PC-GEOS?
I saw that (linked from freshmeat) and downloaded it, and compiled it. Once I figured out that all the configuration files were set up for me, (in the conf/ dir.) it was easy enough to get FreeDOS booting.
:)
I'll try Windows next, I suppose. I'm pleased with how quickly this project has developed; at least Plex86 seems a lot faster than Bochs. I'll be happy once it's competitive (speed-wise) with DOSEmu, and (compatibility-wise) with VMWare.
But in the meantime, kudos, Kevin; keep up the good work! And thanks, MandrakeSoft, for making Bochs open in the first place!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What I meant by that off-the-cuff line was only that in comparison to a more expensive commercial product, Plex86 will seem more attractive (less expensive) to people using it to run those things which Plex86 and VMWare can both handle.
...
I didn't mean the actual price, only relative. I think you're right -- VMWare's price could drop if they want it to compete for home users under those circumstances (of course, running Win95 isn't what most users want nowadays, I'd guess), but until Plex86 can run 98, NT, 2000, Me, or whatever else, VMWare does seem to have a pretty fat corporate target for a while
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Don't be so hasty to judge. He may have slept all day and hacked all night. It's not uncommon, y'know. :)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Yes. Yes it does. You can beowulf cluster twenty emulated linux sessions.
Actually, this gives me an idea...
Me:"Yes, I have a 20,000 node beowulf cluster.. how big is it? Oh, it's all in one machine, just a bunch of instances of plex86.."
If the site gets /.'ed, I put up a mirror at
http://assortedmonkeys.net/plex86runsWin95.gif
regarding Windows allowing a user program to insert a dll/vxd into ring 0: are you serious? What versions of Windows? NT? 2000? I guess 95/98 would allow it, but NT/2000 still allow this? It's been a while since I've written any device drivers; OS/2 v2 was the last time I did this. I'm a little out of touch. Can a user-level program (ring 3) request the kernel to load and run something in ring 0? All without the user installing the ring 0 code? It's ridiculous to think a game should have code running in ring 0.
MS is never going to have a stable operating system if they allow 3rd parties to insert code into the kernel.
-tim
I simply love it. 3D support from the get-go, GLTron and other fun 3D games installed and optimized, and the next version is sure to do the same with Plex86. The only thing wrong with that is that it'll be pretty useless virtualizing Windoze on Mandrake, 'cuz Mandrake will have EVERYTHING you'd ever need or want from an OS. They'll probably end-up with all the FREE web-code pre-configured for you too...
Things like: Drakedot, Drakeshop, DrakePortal, DrakeNet.(-TM?) I just can't wait. BTW, if anyone from Mandrake is reading this. I want a job with you. Even if it's just promoting your product :)
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
WINE: Wine Is Not an Emulator ... it is an implimentation of the win32 API.
Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. But, that creates a dependence on the X server (there's one possible point of failure), and adds some complexity (must modify each VNC resource file to allow CTRL-ALT-ESC via F8, must manage access control to the X server, etc).
Also, the whole notion implies that the VMware sessions are interactive; indeed, there are some critial error messages you can't stop from popping up and halting the VM (starting with RTC disconnected, disks must be scrubbed, etc).
Along the same lines, it would also be nice if the VMware / Plex86 sessions could obey certain signals (HUP, QUIT, SUSPEND, etc).
Plex86's success makes me happy, because now I can implement these ideas myself. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
WABI is an API, like WINE, IIRC
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
A couple of examples are InThether and Clever Content.
What you should be able to do, is run plex86 in a debugger (or if you have to do it a lot, add in some kind of extra interface), and load up windows with the appropriate viewer, and display the stuff you want in it, and then switch over to linux and dig the image out of the appropriate memory location.
Should any of these types of technologies ever catch on, it should be possible to automate the system. You can either modify plex86 to make it easier or automatic, or for certain types of things (like a web site open to all but Clever Content protected) you could even set up a web service to do it automatically. Imagine being able to submit a protected URL to a proxy type service similar to bablefish.
What, are you just completely redundant? of course it has no relation: Plex86 DOES NOT RUN WINDOWS PROGRAMS. IT ONLY RUNS WINDOWS. Windows runs the windows programs. Plex86 runs windows. This is NOT WINE. There is no Microsoft or even microsoft-Like code in it.
Plex86 starts up Windows, running as a process. All well and good, right? Well, that Windows process is talking directly to the processor most of the time, so it's sort of running next to Linux on the box. HOWEVER, that's only most of the time. Plex86 traps instructions relating to memory, etc.. and keeps Windows contained to a little section of the true memory, etc of the system. Thus, some of the time it's next to Linux, some of the time it's on top of Linux.
As they say on the Plex86 website:
Interestingly enough, one of the first uses of this kind of virtualization was under IBMs OS/370, which is/was used on big mainframes. If you get the chance, Linux can run under (diagonally from) OS/370, so in theory you could get Win95 on a mainframe. (Gasp.. choke..
> to the new Amiga (which is to become a mix
> between Java and the Crusoe).
Kinda sortof.
The new Amiga is essentially a consumer version of an OS called Elate (or intent) by a UK company called Tao Systems: www.tao.co.uk.
Taos code is written, or compiled, for a nonexistent Virtual Processor (VP). As a program is loaded from disk into memory, the VP code is translated into the native code of the processor.
This means the *whole OS* is binary-compatible across different processor architectures: device drivers, kernel, the lot, the same binary runs on x86, ARM, MIPS, MC680x0, PowerPC, whatever.
It's the closest thing to total cross-platform compatibility there's ever been. Next to it, Java, a high-level interpreted (or JITed) language for apps, or Crusoe, which dynamically emulates just one processor, look pretty tame.
Go read about it. It's amazing stuff.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
The nice thing about letting real windows run in a VM, is that it'll always run perfectly (albeit a little slower, but VMware is pretty quick). PC hardware tends to change much slower than Windows code. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
binfmt_misc allows you to do this you can make an entry into the kernel magigy to load wine whenever it sees a PE header kinda like how binfmt_java worked
Now THAT is a screenshot I would like to see :)
There's a laundry list of emulators based on "dynamic recompilation" technology. The first ever was ARDI's Executor. The first non-commercial one was Henk-Jan Ober's R3000 recompiler for PSEmuPro (runs PSX games on Windows). That's been followed by UltraHLE, Bleem!, and a hoard of other emulators.
Just remember, when you're reaching towards geekdom, the most important thing to do is resist the intrusion of reality into your slashdot crazed mind. DO NOT READ OTHER SOURCES FOR NEWS! CNN and other news providers might distract you. Only get your news from slashdot. Don't read a newspaper. Don't ever leave the room your computer is in. If you have to, it better be to go to a job where you work on computers. Eating you say? I've read articles on how to cook on a car's motor; overclock your pc until you can cook food on the heatsink. Hell, you might be able to make a use of waste heat! Yes! And always, always, always look for ways to raise your SETI stats. Without that, you'll be horribly lost. Learn how to say "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those..." as a response to ANYTHING. Talk smack about trolls even though every once in awhile they're funny. Finally, make sure you do everything possible to portray yourself as a kharma whore(C)(R)(TM). That's a start. The rest will come naturally (that is, pale skin, no social life, and no chance of ever getting laid). Oh, and before anybody decides to take this seriously, remember this: I was deep enough into a /. comment to actually reply to this message. Obviously, I don't have a life either.
L1-Bill, we've looked at everything, they're not doing anything illegal.
BG- Look harder! There has to be something in the EULA that makes this illegal. The damn thing's longer than my arm in small print!
L2-You see, that's the problem, if they've agreed to the EULA, they've paid for the software. They have a right to run it however they want. We are getting paid for those copies.
BG-I want results not excuses.
L2-Calm down, sir...
L3-Wait! I've got it! You're only allowed to run Windows on one COMPUTER at a time, and we've defined COMPUTER as any digital electronic device, not necessarily a hardware device. I think we can convince a judge that it's a seperate computer when they run Linux.
L4-Also, if we can find a handful of people who are running illegal copies of Windows in Plex86, the software authors clearly contributed to copyright infringement.
BG-Excellent. I'm not sure it'll play in court, but it sound legit enough to scare some managers. Start sending threatening letters to the web hosts immediately.
[general maniacal laughter all around]
--------
It is possible to do that user@foo ~$ ./notepad.exe thing
ever noticed in your kernel configuration
Kernel Support for MISC Binaries? (y/m/N)
well.. that is for just that..
very cool in my opinion
ChiefArcher
Same question RE CPM: Has anyone done a 8080/CPM emulator (and/or a CPM filesystem) that would run on Linux?
(I've got this big box of old 8" floppies and a dusty old CPM machine, and I'd like to port the files to current media and dump the machine. It'd not like I really NEED anything there, but it has sentimental value.)
(Also: There's the source for a beautiful little RTOS I did a couple decades ago for which I lost the listing, with even greater sentimental value. True preemptive multitasking supporting Actors in a half-K on an 8080. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is really the effect of me not using a true color palette in X for plex86 (you can request it in the config file), and then using xwd to dump the window. I'm not an expert in color mapping in X, but this same thing happens in bochs for me too. I used to remember the detailed explanation here.
Anyways, ask on the plex86 developers list if you want a better answer, and I'll be glad to regenerate an accurate one for you.
Kevin Lawton
Plex86 project
Seriously, though. VMWare is a combination of user level programs and kernel modules. The user level program isn't so interesting, but any bugs in the kernel modules could be devastating. It seems that Plex86 requires at least one special kernel module to be loaded in the host system. Which means stability is a real concern. Laugh when Windows 95 crashes inside the user level Plex86 GUI, but if the plex86.o module crashes your host system, you won't laugh.
I do not in any way mean to suggest that Plex86 is not stable -- I really have no idea, and Kevin has a great reputation. But stability does matter for things like VMWare and Plex86, even if they're being used to host lesser OSes.
From a security perspective, having the source for kernel modules seems a very good thing, and this is an advantage for Plex86 over VMWare.
And the timing for the recent successes (booting Linux, running the full Win95 GUI) couldn't be better, as VMWare is apparently about to discontinue its non-commercial/hobbyist license. If the rumors of VMWare leaching off Kevin to get their start are true, then I won't shed any tears for sales they lose to Plex86.
Thanks, Kevin, and MandrakeSoft!
It appears to have its head screwed on correctly when considering what to do where.
Of course, now people will complain about CORBA.
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The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
Any program that runs on an x86 system will run on a perfect simulation of an x86 system.
plex86 is a simulation of an x86 system, so why wouldn't "proprietary microsoft stuff" work? You think they left something out of the driver specs? Such a move would not be to their advantage because you'd have incomplete drivers. . .
I don't know why any (informed) 95 user would upgrade to 98, it was basically just added bloat. Most of the "innovations" in 98 were available as free downloads from M$. About the only useful thing added that wasn't downloadable was using multiple monitors. Which affects maybe 0.01% of users. Anyone needing multiple monitors (& windoze) was probably already using NT anyways. Most (windoze) software released recently works fine on 95.
Of course, I think ALL flavors of windoze suck. I keep a 95 partition for playing an occasional game.
More seriously though how long do you think it will be before M$ comes up with some kind of "fix" for WinXX that essentially breaks Plex86's ability to run? (Like they tried to do with the install of Win98 -- which disables other boot managers...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Also, she is more than creative enough to create a better handle than "The real Anne Marie."
I can't believe I even responded to this post.
Somewhere in an underground fortress in Redmond, thousands of miles beneath the Earth's crust, engineers from the "Plex86 Incompatibility Project" are working feverishly...
This would be great for running servers without the need of a display server on the host, and make unattended startups / shutdowns of guest VM's much simpler.
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All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Most mainframes don't use x86, and so x86 virtualization is not an option for them.
I would find it a great advantage to be able to run Win9x in Linux. I have to frequently reboot to Windows in order to work on papers for university (I need them compatible with school computers). I haven't been able to set up Abiword, StarOffice, or Wordperfect to my satisfaction on Linux. Once I'm in Windows, I lose access to much of my data which is on ext2 partitions, can't check my email (since I don't want two different inboxes, or to have to keep copying it back and forth), and so on. If I was able to run a minimal copy of Windows and Word under Linux, I would be happy. A small performance hit is not a major problem.
Ironically enough, I'm writing this under Windows right now...
You can't run win32 binaries without copying Windows right down to the bugs.
I'm totally amazed at the success the WINE project has accomplished. I'm quite surprised that anything runs in it at all. Even so, you still really need a copy of Windows to get the DLLs you need.
Personally, I think that Plex86 (and in the long term, Bochs) is the best way to handle it: keep it nicely locked up in its own little corner where it can't hurt anything, running the original software, just like emulating every other old platform. Hmm... how long 'till Mame runs Windows? (now that's a truly amazing project)
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Oh, I agree with that. What I waned to know was the diffrence between "VXD's are a bad idea unique to Windows" and "KLM's are great, Linux has them, FreeBSD has them, Solaris has them...".
Is the diffrence really "Windows programmers are morons in it for only the money", and "Linux programers are frickin' briliant"? Or is there a real technical diffrence?
There are a lot of advantages to the plex86 approach (far better emulation, higher potential speed etc), but portability is not one of them.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
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?
Anyone remember OS/2's special video driver for WinOS2 that made windows programs appear to be part of the OS/2 presentation manager ("seamless mode")? It sure would be nice to see something like this for Plex86 - a windows display driver that relays messages to an X-aware process that create and manage separate X windows for each Windows application.
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All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Sorry thecap, but I was written up on Slashdot nearly one YEAR ago. Please see the article to read about the Slashdot piece to see what I am referring to. I do not argue the fact that someone has been writing for quite some time as Anne Marie. I get many emails daily trying to confirm if it is me or not. All I am saying is that if she was written up by /. or has a site that was featured on /. then fine, but I believe I am the real Anne Marie with a site of the same name. Please read the article for details.
Anne Marie
...and it has for over a year.
They're working on that, they told me 6 months ago to sign up for announcements about their "server products". Haven't heard anything since, though. - Barrie
Okay this is really offtopic (sorry), but I have been wondering this for quite a while so I have to ask:
How do you guys know about all this stuff?
Not just about flex86 and wine and the Linux kernel, but EVERYTHING on slashdot! I love reading slashdot, and I love the conversations that go on, but honestly, even though I know enough to comment on some stuff here, most of the news is stuff I haven't heard about before (maybe that's why it's news, I guess).
So, seriously, I'm asking, how do you (whoever you may be) know about this stuff? And, dammit, how can I learn? I LOVE knowledge. I LOVE Science and Math and Computers and High Technology. I WANT to be able to participate more in slashdot discussions and have something new and "insightful" and "interesting" or "informative" to add, but I guess I don't know enough (yet) to do this?
How do I start? Is there some sort of Geek's manual? Are there some sort of slashdot pre-reqs? Or am I just being naive and most of the people on slashdot know a lot about a little, rather than a lot about a lot?
Again, I apologize for being offtopic. I just want to be a good slashdot denizen and don't know how.
Or, has anyone heard of anything in the works?
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All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Kind of a waste of time, if say you have one machine on your desk and you want to say... preview what the web pages you created in VMware will looklike across a lot of platforms without deploying them to the production server. Run apache. Run VMware. Run dreamweaver...
Seriously. I hate dual booting, because whenever i leave one OS and get into the other, i realize that there was something else i needed to do in the last OS.
Maybe it's just that i'm too distractable, but bouncing back and forth really messes with my train of though...
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All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
- the software was finalized at 4:13 PM, and a user surfed until 2:13 AM, or
- Windows can't handle the fact that the system clock is set to UTC (British time), or
- The developers are nocturnal like owls.
In other words, who gives a hoot?Will I retire or break 10K?
Running under Wine you're not actually running windows, just windows programs. You don't need a copy of windows installed, and you don't need a windows partition (loopback or otherwise).
So for things that CAN run under Wine, it's a better solution. They can show up seamlessly on your X desktop as normal X windows, and be launched by the kernel misc binary support straight from the command line or a gnome double-click.
The problem is, Wine can't run The Sims. And it's entirely possible it never WILL be able to run The Sims, because that game insists on loading a VxD in Ring 0 (for no apparent reason). Wine only emulates user mode code, not stuff that needs to run in ring 0 (I.E. wants to be part of the kernel.)
Wine's normal response to this is for the Wine developers to write their own implementation of common VxDs and include them in Wine, and recognize when a VxD is encountered and try to use their implementation instead. This helps with common stuff like DirectX, but doesn't help if the developers of the software actually DID write their own VxD. I don't know what the case is with The Sims, but on a theoretical level Wine can never be a 100% solution when the problem is inherently screwy. Windows allows programs to lobotomize its kernel on a whim via ring 0 VxD's. Linux ain't gonna do that. It's not that we're not actually able to, we're just not stupid enough to WANT to.
Plex86 doesn't care about VxD's. It lets them think they're running in Ring 0, although it's an emulated Ring 0. This means that Plex86 should be able to run The Sims without me having to reboot into a windows partion.
I like this.
Rob
Forever...
They can keep issuing updated DLL's so that programs dependant on them won't run under WINE, but since Plex86 and VMware don't emulate anything but the hardware (if you're running windows in them, you're running Microsoft's code).
As long as Plex and VMware can faithfully present an x86 machine and support hardware to whatever guest OS is being installed, there really shouldn't be much issue, i'm thinking.
True Win95 emulation? Bah! I would believe that when I see the BSOD on my Linux box:).
Did you hear about the mathematician who named his dog Cauchy because it left a residue at every pole?
Check the kernel documentation, or the help items under "make menuconfig"...
The fact that no distribution I know of currently configures this for you is probably mainly because they don't ship Wine yet, because it's still alpha code. (And because they tend not to ship java VMs due to licensing issues, although Kaffe is a candidate here...)
Rob
They did the same thing in Win95. I learned this the first time I had to re-install 95 on my dual boot system
Why would MS care about people running windows under plex86/VMware, let alone try to break it. Whether someone runs windows in an emulated machine, or real machine, Micorsoft still (theoretically) gets the money for the license, to run windows under VMware/plex86 legally, you have to legally have a copy of windows to install in the VMware/plex86 emulated machine.
just wanna say that Iexplorer works perfectly well with wine ...
Is it not so great ?
Wouldn't Linux->Plex86->Win95 be an ideal platform to reverse engineer drivers for all those pieces of hardware that didn't have Linux drivers?
--- I'd love to go out with you, but I have to study for a Turing test.
If you can't live without a good browser and some games then like me you need to run something like Win2k.
What I have done is set up another box in my home lan with RH7 and run eXceed on my Win2k "Desktop" Machine.
Samba is a little difficult at first with win2k, and win2k Internet Sharing is actually quite good, hence i've made it the internet gateway.
It works really well and EASILY, I export my Display to my Win2k box running exceed from my linux box, e.g.
export DISPLAY=192.168.0.51:0
and run something like: emacs &
This is the best way to get the best from both OSes.
I would suggest that the slashdot crew make a new icon for plex86 rather than using the wine icon 'cause these people may enough press in the future to deserve it.