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QEMU Accelerator Achieves Near-Native Performance
An anonymous reader writes "QEMU is a generic and open source processor emulator which achieves a good emulation speed by using dynamic translation. Its sporting a new module called the 'Accelerator' which can achieve near native speeds, and currently runs on Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels. This means you could theoretically run Windows (or another OS) on a Linux machine at near native speeds without buying a commercial emulator. The catch is that although QEMU is released under various open source licenses, the Accelerator uses a free (as in beer) license because the module is a 'closed source proprietary product.' Fabrice Bellard does mention that he would consider open sourcing the Accelerator under certain conditions."
...it would be great. but i'm curious WHEN cerry os will be released... http://www.cherryos.com/
"processor emulator" or "OS emulator"?
"Its sporting new module" or "It's sporting a new module"?
but how fast is "near native"? Some would consider WINE near native in certain aspects, in short, WHERES THE BEEF?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Whatever happened to CherryOS?
So I can emulate my P4 on my P4? Swift!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
perhaps god is trying to tell you something.
It should be noted that the Accelerator only works with x86 computers. It will not work on SPARC or PPC.
I am really looking forward to emulating an Opteron at near native speed on my good old 386sx processor...
Open Sourcing the QEMU Accelerator Technology ?
As a supporter of open source, the author accepts to open source the QEMU Accelerator Technology provided a company invests enough money to support the project and to recompense the author from the potential loss of revenue. Interested companies can look at the roadmap and make suggestions to the author.
If it actually achieves near-native performance right now, how much better can it get? And since it's already gratis, would anyone want to pay for one that achives actual native performance?
I don't think there's much money up for grabs here, to be honest. But that depends on how good it really is right now.
Life is Reality
It's only reasonable, considering the time and effort that this guy put into the program... wasn't ibm pushing out money to linux ? Stuff like this should be funded.
Only by running Windows® That could be convenient for the near term, but my goal is to not send another penny to Redmond.
I dearly hope the accelerator gets GPL'd. Between sysadmin work (reverting to a snapshot ROX) and, just maybe, being able to move W2K people to Linux (there's only a handful of applications we need [damn you, Texas Instruments! Where's your Linux version of Code Composer?], and remote admin is just soooooooo much better with a Unix), I'd be very happy if a) this thing works as well as it's supposed to, and b) if there was some sort of tip jar I could kick in a few bucks to (like with Blender, I believe), and get it released when there was enough money.
Incidentally, I tried installing W2K on qemu w/o the accelerator. When I left work on Friday, it was finishing up the second stage of installation; it was slow as molasses, but seemed to be working. This seems to contradict the note re: disk full during install problem noted on the support page. It's always possible I just haven't hit it yet, but does anyone else have any experience with W2K and qemu?
Carousel is a lie!
A lot of people seem skeptical so far. I've been using qemu to run windows98 under linux for close to a year now. This was before this "accelerator" It was definitely usable. I needed windows for an application from my job, and this let me use it without rebooting. I installed it using the following instructions: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-186001-highli ght-qemu+howto.html
Why not release under a dual licence as mysql have done ... they seem to rake in money while giving the product away. Yes: most people will have it for free, but some will want to pay (to include in a proprietary bundle/...) - the extra market/awareness that open sourcing it will bring will mean that he will get a slice of a larger cake.
They say the mind is the first thing to
Here's a bit more about Qemu. I've now used it quite a bit, and am impressed by it!
Qemu can essentially run any guest OS (Linux,Windows,MacOS,BSD,menuetOS...) under any other. This normally incurs approximately a 4x slowdown, which is pretty good. I've personally installed XP on Linux this way. It's also a great way to test out the latest knoppix.
The KQEmu (accelerator) is a kernel module which allows near-native speeds, if both the guest and host architecture are x86.
Qemu is Free (speech and beer); the accelerator is free (beer), but not, at least for now, open source.
In the specific case of needing to run windows apps on Linux, we have now several options:
API emulation: Wine
PC emulation: Qemu (free)/VMWare (expensive)
VNC: (and just move the display)
This means you could theoretically run Windows on a Linux machine at near native speeds
Theoretically, does it work or not?
Can you cut & paste between the Windows::apps and Linux::apps? Can each OS instance get its own IP# for IPC?
This app could offer a nice technique for "embedded" Windows: Run Linux, and QEMU::Windows with the Windows "screen" hidden or suppressed. Run vncserver on the Windows instance, and a vncviewer on the Linux desktop. Run a watchdog app that pings Windows and its apps, restarting them when they freeze. Put the host in the closet, and never hear surf music again.
--
make install -not war
The qemu claims are accurate. I am currently using this module with qemu and find that I do get 60-70% native speed (just as he advertises) and it is only going to get better. mind you this is x86 on x86. I/O performance (just like on vmware) is still a pig.
Look. Just go download it and try it. Don't post stupid pointless comments about how skeptical you. Don't know how that rated insightful.
I read those "ratios" as, well, ratios: "Wow, QEMU has a 5:10 slowdown, while the accelerator only has a 1:2 slowdown! I should write one with a .1:.2 slowdown! Oops, done."
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If it actually achieves near-native performance right now, how much better can it get?
It is at 1:4 to 1:5 speeds without the accelerator. With the accelerator the ratio is claimed to be between 1:1 and 1:2.
I don't think there's much money up for grabs here, to be honest. But that depends on how good it really is right now.
Depends. If he sells the accelerator to a company and releases the source a few month later under the GPL it might be interesting. A bit like the wine/winex stuff started. If the company manages this in a honest and clever way (unlike transgaming) it might be interesting for the linux community and the company.
Basically, I think Fabrice Bellard just shouted: "I am willing to double-licence this cool stuff.". qemu was already a good alterative to VMware without the accelerator. With a 3D video card driver for a windows guest OS (closed source by the company) it will be a killerapp.
I understand that qemu is also an entire system emulator, but this post calls it a processor emulator. Does the accelerator also help with the general system emulation? Why would you need a processor emulator accelerator that only runs on x86 to emulate an x86 to run Windows? You're already ON an x86... Or is that all this accelerator really is? Some kind of native passthrough? Assuming I had the source and could compile it myself, would it benefit me in emulating a x86 on my PPC?
A closed-source module could contain stolen proprietary code (unlikely, I know, but the risk exists)
I hope this will be treated with caution until it can be ascertained to be fully legitimate...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If you need an iPod to hear God, maybe you should start looking for a different faith...
All you need to do is hack the thing to play the tunes backwards!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The very first line of the linked page states:
"The QEMU Accelerator Module increases the speed of QEMU when a PC is emulated on a PC."
Im sorry, that doesnt sound like emulation to me. Any technology that purports to increase emulation speed of an architecture as long as the host machine is of the same architecture is nothing more than a 'sandbox'. It's not actually emulating the cpu's instruction set -- hence the speed increase. At best you could call it a 'system' emulator but it's a strech to imply it's a cpu emulator (which is the really the heart of all emulators).
Near native to what ? To the clock rate of which processor? the physical one or the virtual one? I mean - Im sure you can emulate a Z80 at "Near Native" speeds without batting an eyelid but what if the Z80 in question was running at 20ghz ?
For example - having used VMWare in the past I have found that the performance of the virtual machine to be roughly half the speed of the host machine (performance might be better these days). Say my machine had a 2ghz cpu - I could say that I was getting "Near Native" speed of a 1ghz chip.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
afaik the only way to run wine on linux-ppc (WINE is not an emulator, and so is x86 dependent) is by using qemu...
also check out darwine... integrated qemu + wine under OS X so you can http://darwine.opendarwin.org/ click on windows apps and run them seamlessly in OS X
fabrice bellard is a processor emulating god imho
shooting is not too good for my enemies
The normal QEMU is more then useable, so i would tend to believe his claims.
Its also limited to emulating a i386 on a i386, so again its quite plasuable. Ever run VMware? I bet they are using the same sort of tricks.
Too bad I cant test them, as its only for Linux, and im running BSD... Perhaps down the road...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What's wrong with having Steve Jobs as God?
Ive found that once it does finally get installed, its not bad at all.
But yes, *installation* is a pain.. I gave up on my first attempt to install W2K, thought it had died...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you read http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/COPYING.modules, you will see that if you write a binary module from scratch it is considered as a derived work from linux kernel, so it should respect the GPL license and be open source.
I am a bit disapointed to see a guy like fabrice bellard which have contributed to lot's of famous open source projects (ffmpeg for exemple) to choose a such decission.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's even better than that. You can emulate my P4 on your P4.
...I make it a point that every time I go into some big chain that sells PCs, like lately at an office depot, I ask them where their "no OS" machines are. When all they have is XP preinstalled. I say "sorry, in the market for a cheap new desktop, but want my own OS and not paying you extra for it when I am not going to use it" and then don't buy the machine there. Costs nothing to do that other than a minute of your time and talking to some manager there. Get enough thousands of people to consistently do that, who knows, eventually the idea might float upstream to bigstore galactic headquarters. Most people just don't bother though, I just think it's something everyone who cares about that issue can do cheaply and easily.
This is Fabrice Bellard of ffmpeg fame. Now I know why he hasn't touched that ffmpeg in a while :)
I think it's definitely desirable to open (or rather, Free) the source. There are other archs and other emulators that could benefit from a port of the technology, and there are Free Software ethics at stake which affect society, if nothing else.
But I don't think anyone can honestly say that someone is "willing to open source a product under certain conditions" if the condition is that you must buy the product outright and relicense it.
You don't presume people are guilty of copyright infringement for no reason. Not unless you're a big media company, of course ;)
From the description, I'd be concerned that releasing the Accelerator code under a non-free (as in speech) license would be incompatible with the linux kernel's GPL license as it could be argued that it is a derived work.
See also http://kerneltrap.org/node/1735.
In practice, it may be enough of a gray area that it won't be a problem -- although it may scare off any company wishing to invest in it.
Personally, I'm just getting sick and tired with the maintainability and reliability issues that binary modules usually incur..
http://www.win4lin.com/
As a supporter of open source, the author accepts to open source the QEMU Accelerator Technology provided a company invests enough money to support the project and to recompense the author from the potential loss of revenue. Interested companies can look at the roadmap and make suggestions to the author.
This software has great potential especially because it isn't bound by any third party IP (that he mentions).
I vote that OSDL hires Fabrice Bellard so that the GPL can have the code. After more development and testing, maybe a LKM could be provided as part of the standard Linux kernel's offerings. Look at Fabrice's other projects on his homepage and tell me you don't think he would make a good person to have at OSDL. FFMPEG, linmodem, a tiny openGL implementation, an EMACS clone, a C compiler... quite impressive.
Surely OSDL can see the potential of something like this being integrated into Linux and also their high end systems research. If IBM could sell desktop linux computers with full Open source application suites and include as an option the virtual windows PC, this takes care of some serious migration issues.
This software coupled with carrier grade linux (or some of the other cool stuff at OSDL) could run legacy management management applications or servers that require Windows all inside some monster of a 64 processor linux computer.
How can be something you wrote from scratch be a derived work of something else? This kind of like SCO wanting control of the code written by IBM. Even if that's allowed by law, it's morally wrong to demand compliance. Yes, I know Linus is the author of this document, but I think he is doing his own "GNU/Linux" thing here and should change his mind.
One thing isn't clear to me: I've read some things about win-emulators and wine (which claims it's not an emulator, but the differnce is not clear to me), and now this thing.
But what, exactly, is best? I mean, even after reading the wine page for instance, I left wondering how and what it actually can achieve. It seems to indicate that win-progs can run without any problems, but on the other hand the list of progs that actually runs (and to what level isn't clear neither) is rather short.
Does it mean that 'native window-progs' can be run, yes or no? Or just the progs that are mentionned on the list(s) - which would be a lot less interesting. Does it run generic win-progs? In short; can I download a prog from the Net, and have a reasonable expectation it will run (nearly) as good and fast on linux, then it would on windows?
And if not, can that be achieved by the emulator that is described in the above article?
Not otherwise mentioned here: full sound support via SB16 emulation, built in NAT network support [the guest OS can use DHCP to get an address], and easy access to your linux filesystem on hosted windows environments via automatically configured SMB shares! It runs smbd as a slave process and comunicates with it over pipes, so it dosen't even require any root permisions.
/ahuge/unt/qemuXP.img -boot c -m 384 -user-net -enable-audio -smb /home/michael -pci &
qemu -hda
Simple as that, and you're running XP with audio, network, and local filesystem access.
Of course, having to insmod a closed-source kernel module is unnerving, admitedly. But all of the above still applies and is usable without it, it's just not nearly as fast.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
I sometimes want to play old DOS games on my P3 machine. A lot of these games work in Real Mode, period. And they often can't do sound except on specific sound cards. I can:
- Get a second machine for game playing. I don't spend that much time playing games. At least I hope not...
- Reboot to DOS every time I want to run a game. Inconvenient, and the sound doesn't always work.
- Fire up VMWare. Except I can't afford a copy right now...
- Run DOSBox, which emulates not only a 286-class processor, but other legacy hardware such as sound cards and Hercules Graphics.
DOSBox is a really impressive bit of software, but it demands a lot of cycles to get the job done. (Typically, 75% of the CPU time on my P3 when I do VGA games full screen. Playing in a window is impossible unless I step down the color depth of my display.) So it's not good for much except real- and protected-mode games. An open-source emulator that doesn't have that kind of overhead would be very useful.I decided to test this on my 1.25GHz G4 Powerbook running Yellow Dog Linux 4.0.
/proc/cpuinfo reported an 18MHz Pentium Pro (ouch) /dev/cdrom -boot d winxp.img )
-It compiled in about 2 minutes flat
-The sample Freedos and Linux-Test images booted fine
- In the linux-test,
- I used qemu-img to create a 3gb disk image for testing Windows XP
- I booted off a Windows XP CD, and am in progress of installing on said disk image
( qemu -cdrom
no comment
Could this be used to sufficiently virtualize a 'palladiumized' system such that we could run a hypothetical DRM-up-the-ass version of Windows in it and then from the host OS side peek at all the secret data that the copyright cartel thinks is locked down?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Secondly, QEMU Accelerator is not an emulator, it is a virtualisation layer. It executes most instructions on the host CPU, using the emulator as a sand-box and system emulator, rather than a CPU emulator. Emulating x86 on x86 at a reasonable speed is really not that hard (non-trivial, but certainly not unbelievable).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Ah, the irony! They're not just having difficulty hearing God; they're not even listening to themselves!
Why would you even need an emulator? You can have a Workstation (Say A Windows PC) running your Windows Apps. Load Cygwin on it, use it as an XTerminal. Get a headless Linux Box, network the two together. Get a Sparc, network it. Have all your displays on your Windows system. Use NFS and share files. You can run multiple OSes by having a mutltihost networked system.
Hopefully there is enough deman to have a similar layer developed for Windows.
Then, if only I could figure out how to communicate between the Windows host environment and the emulated Linux one, I'd be all set.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Having a free, open-source virtual machine means you can easily copy songs from napster or any other source regardless of DRM. It should be trivial to patch the sound blaster emulation to start dumping to disk when the sound starts and stop once the device is closed or the sound pauses for 1 sec or so. This would make it trivial to copy napster songs regardless of what they do to lock down Windows itself, and it requires almost no work on the part of the user (they just play the song in a qemu-xp and it's saved as qemu###.wav... it would be a bit more difficult to automatically get the song name). But no manual starting/stoping of the recording is needed.
Ultimately this will be used to justify locking the system down at the hardware level with a verification key of some sort (aka paladium or whatever). If the BIOS has a private key and the OS includes the public key then it can encrypt something only the real bios can decrypt, so a virtual pc will need to either have the private key or be able to fake the OS. But ultimately the OS depends on the processor and system to be "honest" so the only way to prevent a QEMU from tricking the OS is to prevent it from running at all (the actual OS must prevent arbitrary programs from running).
I suppose locking up the computer so only offical, blessed software can run so that megacorps can deny us fair-use rights is called progress. But until then I'll continue to donate to wikipedia (so we know) and add more GPL code to the world (so we can do something about it).
For people trying to migrate away from Windows, the solution isn't usually going to be to buy more hardware.
All you haters need to quit your bitchin'....Mr. Fabrice Bellard, THANK YOU FOR THIS PROJECT!
If you'd like to give it a try with Knoppix and you have an ISO lying around, type:
Boots up perfectly. WOW!
The author writes:
As a supporter of open source, the author accepts to open source the QEMU Accelerator Technology provided a company invests enough money to support the project and to recompense the author from the potential loss of revenue. Interested companies can look at the roadmap and make suggestions to the author.
What matters isn't really the potential loss of revenue, but the expected loss of revenue, i.e., large amount of money multiplied by the low probability of actually succeeding.
I'm sure the accelerator is skillfully written, but I think chances of turning QEMU+Accelerator into something commercially successful are next to nil. Why? Foremost because the market already has VirtualPC and VMware in it, created and maintained by big companies with deep pockets, lots of lawyers, and large patent portfolios. Oh, and then there are coLinux, Xen, and UML that he would be competing with as well.
To compete, he'd have to get startup funding, a management team, developers, support, and, worst of all, sales people: a lot of work, a lot of money, and next to impossible if you don't either get a lot of buzz or know the right people. Then he'd have to develop a product; a product isn't just a working piece of code, it's documentation, training, tutorials, travel, presentations. People don't expect that from FOSS, but they do expect it as soon as they pay a couple of bucks for something. Even if he does all that, the most likely outcome is still that the startup fails. But even if it succeeded, he would probably only end up with a small slice of a moderately successful company (competition and all that), and only after spending several years of his life doing things he probably doesn't enjoy.
I think people underestimate how hard it is to commercialize something, even something that is really good and novel (his software may be really good, but it isn't novel).
I think his best bet would be release it under a dual license (GPL/commercial) right away, while people are paying attention, and build a consulting business and commercial licensing around it. He won't become an instant billionaire that way, but if he has a worthwhile product, it can be a steady source of good money doing mostly what he enjoys. If he sits on the software too long waiting for a sugar daddy, it will be less and less likely that he will be able to get anything out of it.
Oh, and in case you are wondering whether my argument is disingenuous and I just want to get a free virtual machine, it isn't: I already have VirtualPC and VMware, and I actually prefer the various user mode Linux solutions at this point.
I don't mind the guy charging for software, after all that's part of what professional software developers do, like artists, they want to be paid for the products of their efforts, but for Christ's sake, call it what it is instead of hiding behind the guise of OSS.
This was a typical moderator reaction. Poster made a good point. Though posted AC, it needs to be seen.
"Free as in beer" is good enough for all but the most demanding zealot.
Hiding behind another /. username isn't going to help.
Pile of torrents at torrents for linux-under-windows isos. Look like SuSE for Windows . 2.4 kernels perform better than 2.6 ones, but all work !
Thanks for proving my point of why the GPL is so bad and everything free should be under the BSD license instead..
Of course i expect to be moderated way down, again...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unless it uses proprietary IP to which he has no right. I'd hate to base any business of my own predicated upon his unproven honesty. I read his ad and didn't see any statement to the effect that it's free of other people's IP.
don't - or every other .sig will be a link to freeiGods.com soon
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Here is what you want: CoLinux
And then write this on the blackboard until you are very afraid:
So why can't QEMU emulate the TPM chip? Because it does not know any secret keys. Each TPM has a secret key. And that key is a secret. Forever sealed in the chip. Even the manufacturer does not know the key. The key is a true secret. Nothing outside of the TPM chip itself has ever seen that private key.
There's a technical name for software like WINE. It's not an emulator, it's a compatibility layer. Look it up on wikipedia.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
OK, assuming you *somehow* ;) had a windows iso in ~, you could install/run windows from within Linux?
.
I just thought I'd share this with you.
WINE isn't an emulator. What it does is that it runs as an interpreter between the program and the Linux kernel/associated programs, since Windows and Linux have different ways of doing everything.
It runs as an interpreter between the Windows API that the program expects and the Linux API that the system actually has. As a result, the WINE project has to implement a clean-room version of every single thing that a Windows program can ever call.
Since they have to do that, I'd say they're doing pretty well...I'm running Diablo II and WarCraft III under WINE now, and they work rather nicely for me.
Just because WINE doesn't list an application as "Gold" doesn't mean it won't work. It just means it won't work without a bit of work, or a workaround, or somesuch.
So does this mean I can install OSX on qemu under Linux or Windows?
QEMU is also a pain in the ass to get running.
DOSBOX is much easier, more compatible, more features.
Qemu is faster. (Oh, and the new open source near native speed being claimed by this article isn't; it's closed source. RTFA to find out).
You're pretty thick. "Free software" has little to do with money.
He claims it's to cover "lost revenue" if he opens the source but the reality is that he is getting no revenue currently and is unlikely ever to. VMware is the undisputed king of the vitualization market (with MS Virtual PC catching up).
VMware Workstation works extremely well. QEmu would have an extraordinarily difficult time competing in the proprietary software space, and the author knows this. If he had asked for donations to help support development I would happily contribute and encourage others to, but this just stinks.
" Why not release under a dual licence as mysql have done ... they seem to rake in money while giving the product away."
QEMU isn't MySQL. All software isn't equal.
"Yes: most people will have it for free, but some will want to pay (to include in a proprietary bundle/...) - the extra market/awareness that open sourcing it will bring will mean that he will get a slice of a larger cake."
A testimony to the visability (and hence market) is all the open source projects on Sourceforge just waiting for their day in the spotlight.
Colinux runs Linux at native speeds under WinXP.
Considering AMD and Intel's push for virtualization *in* the CPU, are projects like these really going to have a future? Why run Windows on top of Linux when in the near future I will be able to run them side by side.
is somehow strange, idiotic or wrong? Say what? It's why they have a store in the first place.
Actually, it works quite well once enough people do it.some examples here: I was one of those people who consistently refused to answer personal questions to buy something at Radio Shack, when it was their corporate policy. Did it for a couple of years and I know quite a few other people did it too,and this has been covered on slashdot before, eventually they stopped with the 50 questions. I have asked the local grocery store where I shop to carry this and that items they didn't stock,in the produce and in the meat section, now they stock those items and the department managers thanked me, said their sales went up. In fact I was directly responsible for the large grocery here always carrying fresh cooking herbs, first I asked if they would like to try some to sell, they said sure, I sold them a few bags of extra from our gardens. they sold well, now they carry them all the time and the guy is looking forward to my cheaper fresher stuff again this upcoming season. so he'll have two "brands" for people to choose from when before they had not much of any herbs there.
Back when we second amendment guys got a wild hair about rosie o donnel being kmart tv spokesmodel, I went to my local kmart manager and said I would boycott until she got removed, thousands of other people did the same thing, and we wrote letters to kmart and to their tv advertisers, etc, and eventually they fired her. Customer feedback works once it hits some magical critical mass level, always a variable, but it's there.
As to getting cars or trucks with or without this or that, you can do it, most dealers will arrange it if you got cash in hand. You won't get the same warranty,if any, but it's possible. I know for example just on the truck side of things you can order a truck with zero bed, just the frame, and put your own bed on it. It's not common, but it's not all that uncommon either, and to get to computers, please, installing an OS is just a tad easier than putting a new engine in a car, easier, cheaper, computers are designed to accept disks and keyboard and mouse commands, it's just not that strange of a request, and there are some chains that do this now, just not all of them, but eventually I think you'll see it be pretty much universal.
There's no harm in asking your retailer to provide you with something you want to buy, this is called customer feedback and can work if *enough* people do it. They are in business to sell you stuff and make money, that's their bottom line. Sure, a dozen people doing it won't result in much, but say if some place like office depot got 10,000 requests over a one week period or a month, and the requests were to actual main store managers? That info would filter upstream and at least get seriously considered. If people want no OS or x-Linux OS preinstalled, then I say they should ask for it at the retail level. It's no different than asking for anything else.
Actually, that is only partially true. OSS IS about access to source code, sharing of information and ideas. It's also great when it's free (as in beer). Parent raises a good point. It seems the purpose of this /. newsvertisement is to generate enough interest to attract venture capital--definitely not an OSS ideal. Like so many /.'ers, you resort to name calling when someone disagrees with the thread "follow me" mentality. No where in parent post did author make a personal attack against Mr. Bellard, but you chose to make a personal attack against poster. That doesn't speak too highly of you.
God built all the electronics. Especially the Cylons.
Saw this and (strangely) the site wasn't /.ed...
/dev/cdrom
/dev/cdrom -hda (some image file)
It built and works EXCELLENT.
To run a Knoppix CD:
qemu -cdrom
To boot off CD, and have a HD image (to install on, for example)
qemu -boot d -cdrom
Look in the fine docs for qemu-img docs.
VMware is do dead...
I'm glad it doesn't work on other processors. Otherwise, the OS monopoly would argue that they should be compensated for every processor sold, not just x86.
Near Native. Right. I have heard that story for years. For me it started with claims that on the PowerPC they could achieve 95% of native performance when emulating Windows. Maybe if you had some hardware betwwen memory and the CPU that translated on the fly then it might work. Look at Transmeta. Even in micro-code they can't compete on performance.
I understand that, QEMU being an unfunded project, the author hasn't enough resources to port this technology to other host platforms.
However if the Accelerator Technology is portable to platforms such as PowerPC or Cell, then it perfectly makes sense to keep it closed source if the goal is to open source it in exchange for financial or material support. Imagine what IBM could do with a near-native performance x86 emulator running on Cell... No more counter-arguments about compatibility, and Cell becomes instantly the fastest x86-compatible processor on the market. Given Cell's potential for parallel computation, this should beat the crap out of Opteron or whatever Intel could release in the near future.
Not true, QEMU natively supports SPARC architecture, and ARM and MIPS processor support is mentioned on the roadmap page:
i ng_Training.htm
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/roadmap.html
Other processors will likely be supported, although reverse engineering will be a necessary component:
http://www.liveammo.com/LiveAmmo_Reverse_Engineer
From trying out Knoppix, I'm pretty impressed by the speed. It's been long enough since I last tried qemu with knoppix that I can't say if the new module is helping out to a large extent, but it's still pretty cool. The downside is that I tried installing Windows98, and on rebooting it dies with a "windows protection error". On doing some searching, it seems this is a known problem with the 9x series using this module.
Bullshit. Show me the tests. I want to see the x86 hardware which can emulate a Dual 2.5GHz G5 and beat it for speed, for less money.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
SpecINT scores
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I A A G
n M P e
t D P i
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The writing is on the wall!
Even a Geico cluster of insurance salesmen can outperform Apple.
"I completely agree with his direction, he has a right to make money off his work and an obligation to the open source community. He _can_ have it both ways."
As long as the "Information want's to be free" people leave him alone.
"Either you've said that twice now or there was someone else with the same opinion. Either way, my answer to that is BULLSHIT! If I wanted to believe in the designers' infallibility, I would never have asked the question in the first place. It's the suits in the copyright cartel who buy that shit and the geeks on the net who prove them wrong."
Which is why the GPL'ers "Locking up the code" argument against the BSD license is bogus.
""Free as in beer" is good enough for all but the most demanding zealot."
Until Nvidia or ATI goes out of business.
So "near native" means you get nearly 100% of the performance of YOUR x86 chip that you are running on.
In other words, it's very efficient. Running a guest OS under qemu, it runs almost as fast as it would if you just installed it natively on your machine.
No, it means you can have near native speed for emulating ("virtualizing" would probably be the best word here) x86 systems on a x86 platform.
Great! Now can I use Windows Update?
I have been using VMware Workstation (home user/single user) and GSX (for Windows servers) for over 4 years now. Both has been very solid with very (such as one a month) few crashs/freezes. The hardware emulation of VMware is very complete and runs almost everything. If you can pay the $200, please consider it. It's money well spent.
...what I've found to be easiest method is using ssh/sftp from the guest to the host computer. You need to make sure to use the -user-net option and that sshd is running on the host (Cygwin can do this in Winblow$). It's worked for me every time.
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well at least i never had any success with linux 2.4 on vmware 2.x or linux 2.6 on vmware 3.x
which makes me guess that the operating systems only work reliablly because of lots of testing and fixing specific bugs not because the virtualistation is good all round.
You could use PearPC (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/) for that. A friend of mine successfully finished his Mac OS X Installation just a few days ago and reported 'usable' speeds, whatever this means.
When they make this kind of software with the ability to drive 3D graphics card it will instantly give linux the ability to run a huge portion of windows games with unprecidented compatibilty
Sure they exist, i got one the other day for nothing.
The guy down the hall bought one and left it on his desk unattended. "free ipod".
---- Booth was a patriot ----
CherryOS!
(...for those of you who don't remember...)
Cooperative Linux already provides a way to run Linux under a kind of hardware emulation. If you wanted to run other operating systems then QEMU would be useful, but if you just want a way to run Linux on your Windows desktop then a good answer already exists.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I'm not getting the relevance, but this is Slashdot so if I misunderstand something obvious I won't stick out.
Any computing device can be simulated so long as a trusted computer provides for a Turing complete untrusted process. This includes emulating a (broken) "trusted" computer, does it not?, including emulated network responses, emulated sound card, and emulated TPM chip complete with a fake private key and a matching public key? It might be easy to stop corrupted real hardware manufacturers, but what about corrupted emulated hardware manufacturers?
Even if the emulation is not trusted, what will stop the emulator from piping the emulated /dev/audio data stream to a file?
To answer parent+grandparent: No and I agree. You cannot run OSX on qemu yet there's a cd emulation problem(see the qemu compatability page for more). I personally have a copy of 10.3 on PearPC. It's perfectly useable for web/email, though office is really slow. But I have a lowly P4 2.4, so others may have better experiences.