Hi

Has anybody tried out Bochs ? Is it as easy to install as VMWare? Bochs seems to be owned by Mandrakesoft but why doesn't Mandrakesoft include Bochs in Mandrake Linux distribution? Bochs is not listed in the package list of Mandrake Linux 10.0 powerpack. Are they embarrassed or something :-)? Some info from somebody who has tried out Bochs would be a great help.

Thanks

Neranjana

When I last tried Bochs (around 6 months ago) it still was unbelievable slow.
Bochs is more like an experiment, as it emulates the complete processor while others (like VMware) pass all instructions on to the real processor.

So Bochs is able to run x86 OSes even on other hardware (like PowerPC, Alpha, ...), but the speed factor real : virtual is around 400 : 1 to 1000 : 1.
It's not much fun to run a virtual Linux, Windows or whatever on a virtual machine with the emulated speed of IBM's very first PC.

You can get a little more speed with Plex86, but it still is around 10 times slower than VMware.

Depending on what you want to do, take a look at FAUmachine (formerly UMLinux) or User Mode Linux.

I tried both the linux host and windows host versions. It can be a wee bit tricky to initially setup but regardless of that I was unable to install the current version of slackware via windowsxp and vice-versa, bombed out during both of the OS's setup routines. And never the less regarding performance, even running the ncurses slackware based setup routine it was slow as an old dog returning from a game of fetch the stick in the heat of the Sahara desert. I wouldn't recommend it for runnning anything slightly modern at all (even if you managed to get it all working).