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FreeMWare: Like VMWare but Open Source
CentrX writes "I was surprised that no one has contributed a story about FreeMWare since they started. FreeMWare is "an extensible open source PC virtualization software program which will allow PC and workstation users to run multiple operating systems concurently on the same machine." Like VMWare, only free and open-source. They now have a CVS repository and the latest source can be downloaded. I think this project is needed and needs some support from the community. You can also join the mailing list." FreeMWare was mentioned briefly here in April. Looks like it's come a long way since then.
Not to complain or anything, but how does that post qualify as "Redundant"? I just looked through every other post in the forum and failed to find *anything* which made the same point that I did (admittedly, rather..um..concisely). Yes, there wasn't an incredible amount of rhetoric or analysis, but there isn't a "Shallow" button in the moderator widgets.
;-) ): 90% of the people who are screaming bloody murder because Freemware is "ripping off" the VMWare folks are apparently running Linux. Linux is a free clone of the Unix[tm] operating system which at the time was being sold by various commercial companies. Linux has no particularly innovative features; in fact, it's still catching up with Solaris in many areas and its feature list is essentially borrowed from other operating systems. Its distinguishing characteristic is that (drum roll) it's free! In fact, it was originally written because Linus Torvalds wanted to use Unix on his PC but didn't want to pay for the commercial Unix systems. Does this sound familiar yet?
To repeat myself (now I guess I am Redundant
In other words: the same people who are up in arms about Freemware ought logically to be up in arms about the very operating system they are running it on! Anything less is inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.
Hope this makes my point clearer,
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
If they included some pluggable module architechture, here a three examples that come to mind:
Of course, you would be able to stack the trace module and the passthru module together for a bitchin' development environment!
-AP
A little history, to be fair. The idea of a "virtual machine" and the name VM came from IBM a looong time ago, 70s I believe, at least well before 1980.
IBM sold VM that could load and run other of its operating systems on 370-based mainframes, like MVS or even other copies and versions of VM. This was very helpful for system administrators. Back then, you just couldn't go buy a test box for trying out newer versions or for testing risky patches, etc. So you just ran another guest OS under VM!
So, if anyone has a beef about using the VM acronym in a product name describing this feature, it should be IBM.
I've been on the mailing list for freeMWare since it started, and although I'm quiet, I pay attention. It really is coming along, and is (unlike other group projects I've followed) actually being led somewhere by the remarkable mr Kevin Lawton (sp?). I have to say, congrats to all the contributors, as this is a big step in the right direction.
-Josh G
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
In particular, commercial software is invariably greated with hostility, and the birth of a project whose sole aim is to do a "cheap imitation" of the innovative commercial product, which inevitably will have the same kind of effect as IE had on Netscape. Linux hardware shops are often turned down by linux users in favour of windows-only shops. Linux users don't seem to vote with their wallets.
However, I am still hoping that, like you and I, there will be others who will pay their fair share. I am saddened that there is a faction of linux users that remind me of the warez scene.
How about those poor bastards at VMWare? They will surely loose a lot from this.
Only if they can't produce a superior product.
Open Source has its dark side too - since it rips programmers from their jobs. If this Open VMware becomes successful, there is a chance that VMWare will not pull in big enough revenue to support all of its programmers!
And we all know that VMWare is not our enemy, after all it DOES innovate and does produce some amazing software for Linux. Why would we want to hurt a company like that??
If they fail to produce anything worth throwing any money at, why should we continue to throw money at them? If they succeed in continuing to produce something worth paying for, we'll continue to pay for it.
Open Source does not rip programmers from their jobs unless they have worthless jobs. As long as they're producing something that there's a good reason to throw money at, people will continue to throw money at them. I've already thrown them my $99, and the company I work for will probably throw them $299 early next year, once I convince them of the advantages their product provides. And as long as they continue to provide software that enhances our computer use, we'll continue to provide financial support for them to do so. They're only going to stop getting money if they fail to provide anything beneficial to us, which is as it should be.
I look forward to FreeMWare, because I suspect it'll spur VMware to produce an even better product in order to stay ahead. They got a good head start but they'll have to work if they want to keep it, rather than just rest on their past success. So, as a paying VMware customer, the FreeMWare project benefits me, even if I never run FreeMWare's product. I'm glad they're out there, and I wish them luck!
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I for one am glad this is in development. I used VMWare back in it's beta days and was quite impressed with the idea. I wasn't that impressed when I started getting spammed about the release version and 'send us x ammount of dollars so you can still use this.'
If I was going to pay them the ammount they wanted, I would expect that all of my hardware would work with VMWare, but it wouldn't recognize my windoze partition and made me re-install, wouldn't let me have the 6 IDE devices I have in my pc (4 HDD, 1 CD-ROM, 1 CD-RW)
Now with FreeMWare, it's free, I expect stuff like this, and spending hours configuring it to be useful. I wonder how this will affect VMWare's pricing scheme?
---The proceeding comments were not paid for by the following advertisers.
I've used VMWare, and it does an excellent job of emulating an x86 environment, with better compatibility than Wine, DOSEmu, or just about anything else. That's impressive.
However, for whatever reason, it needs a lot more RAM.
You have to understand that DOSemu and Wine are doing different things then VMWare, et. al.
DOSemu attempts to provide real-mode DOS emulation, with limited protected mode support. There are several things that make this very possible. One is the fact that MS-DOS really isn't much more then a glorified interrupt handler. Another is that the i386 architecture already has support for emulating x86 real mode ("virtual mode"). DOSemu has to setup the processor and service some interrupts, but nothing too outrageous. Remember, DOS programs already have to do almost everything themselves, so there is not as much left for DOSemu to do. (I don't mean to belittle the DOSemu people here; they've done a great job). Memory overhead is low, because (again) DOS doesn't do much to begin with.
Wine is similar: A project to implement the MS-Windows binary interface and runtime libraries on top of Linux/Unix/Posix/whatever. Same basic idea as DOSemu: Provide the services that an existing Microsoft product already provides. With Windows, though, there are considerably more services to implement. Given Microsoft's love of secret APIs, and the fact that MS has trouble properly implementing their own specification, the Wine team's job is pretty big. Memory overhead is higher then DOSemu, again because it does more. It is still lower then loading all of Windows would be, though, because you already have Linux providing a lot (hardware abstraction, system services, etc.).
VMWare (and FreeMWare) are doing something very different from Wine and DOSemu. They are emulating an entire i386 machine, complete with protected mode support. The i386 design has very little in the way of i386 virtualization support, so they need to do a lot in software. Furtheremore, they are not trying to run a DOS or Windows program, they are setting up an entire machine. Wine and DOSemu pass as much of the work to the underlying OS as possible. VMware does not -- you have to load an entire OS again. That is why VMware uses more memory: It has to. Because the i386 arcitecture is very well defined, however, they can do a good job of emulating it. Then your Windows program (for example) uses Windows itself to run. VMWare does not need to provide a quality implementation of Windows (if that is even possible); it uses the real thing.
I hope this sheds a little light on why these programs act the way they do.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Recreated commercial products is an excellent idea if there's currently no free alternative. The point is to maximize choice. People should have the option to pay for a commercial solution if they want to, they should not be forced into buying one because they have no alternative. And from the other side, a company throwing serious development money at a team of programmers that can't produce a superior product should go bankrupt! Software is not supposed to be welfare! We shouldn't be paying people to do useless jobs. Commercial developers should make money if and only if they produce products that provide server above and beyond what can be produced by a bunch of hackers in their spare time for free! If they can't, then why are we paying money to them? Is this just corporate welfare?
Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff.
Only if they are producing something superior.
And it doesn't just line someones pockets - its lets them work on their products as a job instead of some "after school" effort.
If they aren't producing something better than 'some "after school" effort' would produce, they ought not be making money at it! If they are producing something better, they will make money at it, since people who want the better product will pay for it instead of use the inferior free alternative.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I completely share your sentiments... As much as the idea of open source seems to be a good one, more often than not it seems more and more open source projects are springing up that simply mimic already created but "proprietary" programs.
With everyone getting down on MSFT for not innovating enough, where's the innovation in completely recreating someone else's product?
Perhaps MSFT themselves could take a play from this book and start releasing opensource versions of all of their competitors top products. It wouldn't help them in terms of gaining income from those markets, but at least it would deprive IBM, Oracle, Sun and others of much needed revenues... And they could say with a clear conscience that they've done nothing wrong, since that's just how the open-source community operates.
You have to understand that Linux has gone mainstream already. This means that free software developers are no longer the majority of its user base.
I fail to see how this is relevant to your point. The people who are, as you imply, diluting the number of programmers would never have looked at this project anyway! The only difference is that now they're ignoring it while running a free operating system, instead of ignoring it while running a proprietary one.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Would it? If IBM, Oracle, and Sun produce superior products, people will pay for them regardless of what Micros~1 does, so they will continue to make money. If Micros~1 releases as open source what is in fact a superior product, anyone, including IBM, Oracle, and Sun can simply incorporate Micros~1's work into their own, and add additional features making their own offering superior and continue to make money. If IBM, Oracle, and Sun decide to respond to this move from Micros~1 by not producing a superior product by one of the two methods mentioned, it becomes highly questionable whether they deserve to make money. Should we just pay them for inferior work just because? I'm not a big fan of corporate welfare, even if it's for a tech company I may work for some day. I'd rather make my money honestly, thank you very much.
And they could say with a clear conscience that they've done nothing wrong, since that's just how the open-source community operates.
Indeed. They could say that, because it would be true. If, under the conditions specified, IBM, Oracle, and Sun couldn't continue to make money, it'd be their own fault, not Micros~1's.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
/* It will swap like crazy if you assign the VM an amount equal to your physical memory.*/
I don't believe I've used the word 'duh' since the early 1980's.
I have a K6-2/400 with 256M RAM which makes it very comfortable to run Linux with 128M for host and VM with 128M. Performance ceases to be an issue above 192M RAM -- sometimes VMWare may *APPEAR* to be slower than it is because of screen refresh rates. If you run the VM in full screen mode you can get native speed on a machine with a decent amount of RAM.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Is there a way to write to the VMWare image file from the host OS? I mean, could you read the files from the Zip with the host, write a VMWare virtual partion with the host, and then real the virtual HD from the guest OS?
Seems better than trying to do some strange hardware emulation with the parallel port.
Open source developers aren't in it for the money. I think most serious(long time) open source developers program on projects becuase they like doing it or to "scratch an itch". Sure appritiation is great, but most developers would be just as happy if their software was simply taken for granted. I know quite a few open source developers and never has it seemed like they were working on what they were working on simply for money or appriciation. many of them have life goals like "get rich, retire early, work full time on open source software", can't you see, these guys are idealists. right now i'm writing a program that demos how to program in a new programming environment(entity, check freshmeat). I'm not doing this for money or any other real motives and i doubt more than 50 people even use it ever. open source for me is just programming for fun and something to do. you could send me donations, cards, mails, cakes, and whatever else but objects like that aren't what drive me.
The whole point of Linux is Freedom. You don't get Freedom with proprietary software.
I will use proprietary software, when it is absoultely necessary. But I will always use a Free alternative, when available.
I'm starting a new job, and will need VMWare so I can test stuff in Windows, so I have asked my new company to purchase a copy of VMWare. But, I assure you, as soon as I can switch to FreeMWare, I will.
It's not about the money; it's about the Freedom.
I would think by now, people would understand that. Even Anonymous Cowards.
There will always be a certain ammount of 'fitness' simply because a project is open source, especially if it's GPLed or otherwise locked from becoming proprietary.
The OSS you know what's in it and know that it won't change in ways that make it less usefull.
If you're locking into NT, you never know what MS will do. They might 'break' major connectivity preventing some part of your project from working. Many businesses I know use unix for mailservers and other important machines, and NT to admin the lower-end user boxes. What if part of this was broken. You'd have to change how your department ran, or switch to a new OS.
If you were locked into Linux, this wouldn't happen. There's no incentive for Linus to change protocols to be less compatible with other OSes, and even if he wanted it, he's only the most prominent voice in the primary branch, many distros would simply 'patch' the imcompatibility and continue business as usual.
Similarly, any closed source software can be modified in ways that are detrimental to you and you can't do anything about it, especially if there are needed patches which are only in the new version. (Think NT and the killer service packs.)
I do low-end database work for a client who uses Paradox for compatibility with the Corel office suite, and at each new release we have to go through and fix a bunch of problems preventing our old programs from running on the new 'compatible' version. If this was an open project, this wouldn't happen.
(And yes, I believe you can be 'locked' into Linux, or unix at least (being as replacing unix with BSD or vice versa is fairly easy). Simply have a large number of critical apps working on it without better solutions in another OS. But I don't see it as being a bad OS to be locked into, if you must be locked into something.)
VMWare's a small company with one real product (maybe there are others? if so, they're really inconsequential). They had the foresight to think that there would be a market for their product. People found a use for their product. They charge a nominal fee for the use of their product. And their reward? An opensource variant.
I'm sure the CEO, CFO, as well as all the employees who toiled away there are so excited by this.
---
If IBM, Oracle, and Sun produce superior products, people will pay for them regardless of what Micros~1 does, so they will continue to make money.
The world has already proved that it's not the superior technology that wins, just the cheapest. Witness IDE over SCSI, Win9x over MacOS, WinNT over Unix workstations, Pentium vs. RISC, the list goes on and on.
It would be crippling to so many companies if Microsoft managed to release an opensource variation of their bread and butter product with even 60% of it's functionality. They (Microsoft) aren't making money from those sales anyways, so if they can prevent others from doing so ("cutting off their air supply") while at the same time adding a new buzzword to their growing repotoire (sp?): an innovative open-source product which embraces developer mindshare...
No way. Of course, VMWare still has some issues, a product of this nature will *always* have issues, but VMWare is VERY open and VERY prompt about dealing with problems. Their supports is superb, and the product is DIRT CHEAP, especially considering how well it works.
I was *AMAZED* at how well it worked, and I went into it very skeptical. And everyone I have shown it too (and I mean people who understand, not peopel who are like 'wow, that's amazing you can run windows under linux!), has been amazed at the performance as well.
It's great if we are working on an open-source project to do the same thing, but the tone of it should be 'he, let's do our own version! and make it open source!' not 'VMWare is not OSS, therefore, EVIL, and besides, it costs $$$, and it should be free... so let's make our own so we don't have to pay.'
Really, is it so bad that it is not oss, or that it is not free, when their is nobody else in their market? They built an excellent product, at a VERY fair price, with VERY fair licensing terms. (a larger company would have charged you a fee per-concurrent-VM)....
VMWare and FreeMWare both virtualize PC hardware. Code executes natively on the host CPU. Playstations, and your intelligent toaster probably do not use the same CPU as your host machine. And non x86 host machines will be unable to run the x86 versions of NT, Linux, or BeOS.
CPU emulation exists and can do all of the above, however, you don't get something for nothing. CPU emulation (see BOCHS, executor, etc) is incredibly slow in the naive case, and even with complex techniques such as dynamic recompilation, signifigantly slower than native code.
I don't mean to be critical, I really don't, and before anyone flaims me, I'm guilty of it too. But here is what I'm hearing:
"I'd really like to use VMware, but they want money."
"VMware is great, but they keep nagging me to pay them."
Etc., etc.. I understand that VMware's not open source, and that maybe it should be. Maybe after this it will be, once they realize that they're not the only kids on the block anymore. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay for it. If it's a program that you use, and that you enjoy, you SHOULD pay for it.
When developers start realizing that they're catering to a bunch of cheap bastards (myself included), they're going to pick up shop, or begin attaching themselves to something a little more worthwhile. Yes, someone else will pick up where they left off, but we need long-timers. Those in for the long haul, who've been around and gotten the experience.
I for one tend to at least try to support the projects that I reap benefit from. Granted, I don't use VMware, and would probably switch to FreeMWare if I did, but not because it was free. More because I am free, free to decide what I think it's worth to me in the scheme of things, free to choose when or where I'm going to pay for it. In other words, I don't use free software. If I like something, I like to show my appreciation of the effort, and money usually works quite nicely.
This is not to say that the developers wouldn't be just as happy with a postcard. A lot of times, it's things like that that MAKE the project worthwhile. In short, I strongly urge those of us caught up in Open Source to appreciate the authors. If you're going to switch to FreeMWare, try and make a donation. Can't make a donation? Send a postcard, or an email, or a birthday cake, or something. Let them know that their work is appreciated, or it won't go on much longer.
Anyone know what minimum specs for this are? I don't use VMWare because my processer (p233) wouldn't run concurrent os's well... I know I *should* run a beefy machine to do something like this, but for situations like mine, where it's plenty of machine for my use, but not the newest wiz-bang 750 mhz chips, will this work well or at all? Lots of non-cutting edge systems out there, ya know. :)
David.
bash: ispell: command not found
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
Anyway, it seems the VMware people have patented some of their technology, so I hope the FreeMWare project doesn't run into any trouble there. I was unable to find out exactly what the patent was.
Let's get real. Free software is fine and more power to those who make it, but we have to realize at some point that people need to get paid for this stuff. And it doesn't just line someones pockets - its lets them work on their products as a job instead of some "after school" effort.
When the next killer app comes out for Linux I'll pay my fair share. How about you?
I can't understand why people seem to have such a problem paying for software that they will (most likely) use to run a commercial OS. How many
:)
people out there are using VMWare to run NetBSD in a window on thier linux box?
You've certainly got a point (while it would be fun to run FreeBSD in a window, I'd probably be mostly running Win98 and BeOS on top of Linux). However, there is a very good reason for a virtualization system to be open sourced: easy migration path. People who would otherwise not use Linux b/c they don't want to reboot to use office or play games can use this (which will, I'm sure, be in most distros once it's stable). Despite the fact that they paid who-knows-how-much for windows and office, they will balk at paying $100 to be able to run windows on linux. But if it's open sourced, they will see it as "free beer". Once alternatives appear (which they're starting to), people will already be confortable with Linux and won't have a problem moving to it entirely.
But overall, I agree with you... if you just want a free-beer VmWare, quit whining and pay the damn company what they're asking! Or help develop FreeMWare.
Okay.
1) They shouldn't have called it 'FreeMWare'. That's not nice.. it's too close to the name VMWare. It could possibly be open to a (possibly deserved) trademark suit.
2) It's GOOD that this project exists, however.
3) It will be quite some time before it matches the performance of VMWare. I'm guessing a year at least, but I'm no expert.
4) VMWare is a good product. The presence of the (lagging behind) FreeMWare may give them incentive to continue to improve their product over the next few years, or else risk losing marketshare to FreeMWare. This is a good thing, and one of the good benefits of free software, it'll keep the commercial stuff GOOD. Peoples reason for buying VMWare will be, as it is today, that it is the best thing out there, period.
5) People have to chill. It's cool to start an OSS project about something, but it shouldn't be done to 'spite' a commercial product. Linux doesn't exist for the purpose of replacing window.s. that's just what's happening now...
Bochs and VMware are written by the same person. Although Bochs does a similar thing Bochs is a PC emulator that can run on multiple architectures and freemWare is a virtual machine that tries to execute as much code natively as possible. Therefore Freemware will run quicker than Bochs but will only run on x86.
--
So what I want to know is if anyone can tell me if FreeMWare will be able to just boot from my existing Windows partition, or if that is even possible?
Well, let me just point out that there are companies producing commercial X-servers and doing quite well at it, even thought XFree86 exists. AND not only does XFree86 exist but it comes with every distribution. If these X-server companies can compete with the out-of-box solution than VMWare can compete with FreeMWare. I mean Wine hasn't replaced Windows yet has it? The folks at VMWare just have to raise the bar alittle. Since they are making money they just need to sink a little of it back into the software. If they can't raise the bar and compete with the free stuff then they never deserved to be in business in the first place.
I agree. Right now each OS provide is solving the same boring problems: getting 3d to work, getting driver support for exotic hardware, making a filesystem, etc.
Having a generic OS core that is free and allows other OS to coexist would mean a great deal for smaller operating systems like BeOS. They wouldn't have to worry so much about hardware support, they wouldn't have to worry so much about coexistence with other operating system and could focus on getting things to work with the virtual hardware instead.
What I'm curious at is whether a multimedia beast like BeOS can be run efficiently virtually or that it would have to live with the limitations of the host OS (filesystem size, etc.).
Jilles
What you want is called Rawdisk support. It is well documented by Vmware on their website and often discussed in their newsgroups. Take a look at the following sites for the specifics on how to set it up. I have used Rawdisks from the start since back in April when the beta's were released.
http://www.vmware.com/support/rawdevi ces.html
news://news.vmware.com
-- I can't say enough in 120 chars!
Without knowing the circumstances and amount of truth behind that statement I can't really comment further. What I can say is, I have used bochs before (for an OS design assignment) and while slow and difficult to configure, it is quite versatile and usable - Windows 3.1 runs usably under Alpha, for example. But I wonder how much of bochs is directly applicable to the problem of virtualisation?
Daniel.
I was told by the guy from vmware at ALS that BeOS does not run well within vmware. It simply likes to have more resources than can be alotted to it by the host OS. I'm also sure that vmware is better optimized to handle things like windows and linux/bsd due to the much larger number of users for those os's than for the BeOS. I have Be, but not vmware so I've never tried it.
Lemme look. Yep, here it is.
:)
Don't go bashing them too much, that was pretty easy to find with the "Search" function. Usually they try to put related links in that extra box at the top, next to the story. CmdrTaco's take on reposting old stories (by mistake, this one wasn't a mistake, just an issue that Roblimo thought should be discussed again, maybe too soon...) is that there are too many stories and submissions to wade through (His estimate in Thoughts From The Furnace was around 9000)
However, if a simple search function to find old articles about the (exact) same topic before posting a new one was implemented correctly, it would be very nice. It would eliminate all of the "Didn't we already see this on Slashdot" posts, as you were saying, it could add a link to the archived version going to the new article if needed, and definitely add a link to the new article back to the old one, to let people know that we are discussing this again for a reason. And it would eliminate all posts like your own, because the problem would be solved, the new feature added, and everyone would be happy. Except for the dude who had to implement it (but he'll probably be inordinately proud of it once he's done, so that's okay).
---
pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
While I don't have any idea whether it's technically a trademark violation, I wish the developers had chosen a name that wasn't simply a variation on VMWare. "FreeMWare" is currently a misleading name in that it suggests that it can do everything that VMWare can do -- which I understand is not presently the case. And even if it could, the name itself suggests an unnecessary hostility to the existence of a commercial product. Names are free; there's no reason not to pick something original.
This sort of development is a line of demarcation between those who like Linux because, like the BSDs and Hurd, it's Free and Open, and those who just like Linux as the "alternative operating system of the day," like OS/2 and BeOS and AmigaOS were/are.
I'm a member of the former; I'm glad that there's a Free VMWare-like solution. I'm not so religious that I would never buy commercial software - I do and will - but I will always prefer a Free option, even if paying for media and documentation (money isn't a big issue for me.)
This DOES put Linux ISVs in an awkward position, but I'm afraid that's really their problem - I hope to see the day that the idea of paying for software is as archaic as the idea of paying for buggy whips. I'm not doing this to make ISVs rich.
I have a concern, in fact, about the growing success of Linux. If two people are doing something for Free because they enjoy doing it, they will usually work pretty hard and do a good job of it. If both of them are getting paid well for it, nothing changes except - perhaps - things might happen more quickly. BUT if ONE is getting paid and the other isn't, I suspect that the latter *might* say "screw this, I'm getting out of here." I'm nervous about what the move to funded development by groups like Mozilla, VALinux, and RedHat might do to the people who were developing on their own dime - and when the IPOs pay off and we get our first cash-in-hand Free Software multimillionaires, how will that affect the people who *aren't?*
Hi guys. I just wanted to put my few cents in. There's a 'mac' version for ppc machines that can run Mac Os. Well, you could run any other os you like. It's called mol (www.ibrium.se). It's open sourced, and works on just about every mac machine. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know :P
I've used VMWare, and it does an excellent job of emulating an x86 environment, with better compatibility than Wine, DOSEmu, or just about anything else. That's impressive.
:).
:)
However, for whatever reason, it needs a lot more RAM. It has to physically allocate however much RAM you tell it to use for the emulated OS, in my case 32MB for Win '98, and then it uses at least another 8MB for its devices and itself, and somewhere in there my 64MB K6/300 decides that it hates life and gets really slow... That's why they recommend at least 128MB RAM. DOSEmu, by contrast, never uses as much RAM as I tell it it can use unless it absolutely has to. Usually I give it 8MB, but when I wanted to run Callus, I gave it 20MB. Worked great, except for lacking sound. Wine generally uses 4MB above and beyond the memory usage of the Windows app, in my experience. (these numbers are all pretty rough, if you've tested this more, please post some results)
Also, I didn't like it that VMWare didn't support more options for an x86 drive. I have a lot of ext2 partitions that I use for my DOS stuff, and DOSEmu and Wine deal with that just fine. I guess I could make some native FAT partitions, but those things are nasty. And compressed drives really are a hack, but I might do that again instead. So I've got a big file where VMWare keeps its 'OS'.
And, when all is said and done, what good is it? Well, I've found that I don't really have much of a use for Win '98, and I can run a lot of other stuff with DOSEmu or Wine. Just about the only thing I'd want VMWare for would be displaying videos with proprietary, unsupported codecs, since XAnim is missing a lot of them and the companies are pretty lame about it.
So why would I want FreeMWare? Well, to play around with it. To be able to compile it with my compiler optimizations and see how it runs. (even if the VMWare team does something like this... well, I don't know about it, and I can't test it)
To see if someone hacks in ext2 support or some kind of generic drive emulation that works well. (have the IDE/SCSI faking area, or use Linux's SCSI faking, and then have the actual drive, whether it's a disk file, a FAT partition, a DOSEmu drive, a VMWare drive, or an ext2 partition...)
I'd like to see it without the weird video corruption I get with VMWare (although my video card does suck
And then I'll have to test out how the native sound works in DOS, that's a must for my DOS games. And then benchmark against DOSEmu.
Of course, first I'd like to know how it's doing now. Has anyone built the source from CVS? I normally just download the releases, but the warning on this one indicated it was anything but stable.
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Go get Emacs and CVS (both available for BeOS, your proprietary operating system). Start writing code for the BeOS FE.
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I'm curious, there's Open Source software movement, why isn't there an Open Source hardware movement. It would be harder, but possible I think.
An idea would be to bootstrap vmware or freemware ontop of an exokernel (I just read the HURD story). The idea of an exokernel is to put very little functionality in it and focus on multiplexing the hardware (so that it can be used by multiple applications). Using such a setup would make it possible to host multiple normal operating systems without having to use a limiting host OS.
I really like this idea of being able to run multiple operating systems at the same time since there is no one size fits all OS. Different applications come with different requirements. The ability to serve web pages is something entirely different than the ability to handle large files.
Jilles
I think we should all donate a bunch of money to the FSF or other free software project. We users can do our parts.
I don't think FreeMWare will be much better at this stage.