I need to run a few simple apps like UPS shipping software, but also a bunch of specialty stuff where hardware compatilibty might be hard and the apps aren't likely to have been thoroughly tested already (OrCAD, Microchip MPLAB, Xilinx WebPack, stuff like that).
#Compiling bochs free
$250 won't break the bank, but free is better of course. Mainly I care about compatibility over performance. So many choices, but I really don't have time to try everything out. Vmware is X86 only, so it's faster, right? Bochs is a full-blown, platform independent emulator, so it's compatible but slow. I know that Wine is like a clone of Windows running natively on Unix, so it's fast. yet run Linux as well? Get yourself a second machine.īut I have to admit I'm not all that well read on the state-of-the art in emulation. Want to run the latest DirectX 9.0, wet your pants LOD game. Looking to simplify cross-OS application debugging, need to have Windows close at hand, doing tech support? Then VMWare is your answer. If you want to run MS Office and can live with a few glitches, get yourself Wine. So in summary, if you are doing some hardcore hacking, get yourself Bochs. BTW, when Windows inevitably hoses itself, I have it running again in the time it takes to copy a 1G file -) Except for a few operations (installing software, for example) the virtual machine runs almost as fast as if I ran the OS natively.
In addition, I can keep multiple OS's running concurrently so testing and debugging apps is fairly painless. Because being an independent programmer/consultant sometimes requires me to use technologies I don't exactly embrace, the Windows in VMWare option allows me to maintain productivity while not opening myself to network *cough* problems. I've used it for the past two years to keep a copy of Win98 and Win2k on my Linux box. VMWare creates a bit of a middle ground between Wine and Bochs.
#Compiling bochs plus
The biggest plus with the Wine approach is that interaction between apps is a tad simpler. However, parts of Wine are still incomplete, so YMMV. Sure, there are still some rough edges, but in many cases, your application will actually run faster under Linux then under Windows. If you are primarily concerned with running one or two Windows apps under Linux that you just can't live without, then Wine is for you. Also, Bochs provides stubs for implementing runtime instrumentation, so you can use powerful debugging techniques that remain 100% insulated from the debugee.
#Compiling bochs code
Compare crashing your real machine hundreds of times while debugging your bootloader and memory management code to having a "virtual" crash in Bochs. I've used all three (Bochs, WINE, VMWare) and each are designed for different purposes.īochs is quite slow for normal application usage, but it is absolutely ideal for low level OS development work.
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