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Bochs 2.0 Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the inside-the-outside-the dept.

Jas Sandys-Lumsdaine writes "Bochs 2.0 has just been released - project lead Bryce Denney writes: "It's been a busy 6 months since our previous release! Bochs is now about twice as fast as version 1.4.1. Also, we can now emulate MMX instructions, SSE/SSE2, and even AMD x86-64 instructions if you turn on the appropriate configure options. The emulation improvements have paid off; several people have been able to install Windows XP recently." Excellent stuff."

4 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Would it have been so hard to say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bochs is a highly portable open source 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. Currently, bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486 or Pentium CPU. Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, Windows® 95, DOS, and recently Windows® NT 4. Bochs was written by Kevin Lawton and is currently maintained by this project.

  2. What we need now... by bakes · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...is some idiot to try to run Windows apps inside WINE running in Bochs under VMWare.

    And don't tell me you didn't all think the same thing as soon as you found out what Bochs was.

    --
    Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
  3. Re:Boch vs. VMWare by Mitchell+Mebane · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's like comparing apples and oranges. VMWare is a virtual machine; it only emulates certain parts of a computer. It's "passes through" most of the work to the host machine. This means that is a lot faster, but it can only run programs designed for the host architecture. Bochs, OTOH, is a full-fledged emulator, which, eventually, will let you run any program on any machine. Since it emulates every, though, it is FAR slower that VMWare. I hope they add some sort of JIT engine sometime.

    --

    The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
    --Aristotle
  4. If you do this enough... by raygundan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just build layer after layer of virtualization like that (Bochs running Windows VMWare in WINE on VirtualPC in a Mac emulator on Linux on VMWare on Bochs etc...) and eventually you'll have enough virtualization that you can pull the original hardware out from under it all, and your "virtual PC" will just run on it's own without hardware. The trick is just getting enough layers of software in their so that they all support eachother's hardware needs.