Re: plex86

[Josh Metzler <joshdeb@metzlers.org>]

On Monday 02 February 2004 03:22 am, Erich Waelde wrote:
> Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> > According to unstable's plex86 page
> > <http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/plex86>, it has been
> > superceded by bochs. But I thought plex86 was a virtual machine
> > and bochs was an emulator. Isn't there a big difference?

Yes and no - there are two plex86 projects.  The original 
(savannah.nongnu.org/projects/plex86) was an x86 virtual machine project that 
would emulate an x86 machine on a Linux x86 host - I say was, because it 
apperas to be almost dead.  The fork (plex86.sourceforge.net) (by Kevin 
Lawton, the original author of both plex86 and Bochs) is a virtual machine 
that will run Linux on a Linux x86 host - not other operating systems which 
make use of "corner cases".

Bochs is an x86 virtual machine that will run on any host architecture, and on 
Linux, Windows, or MacOS.  On Linux x86, it can supposedly make use of a 
plex86 kernel module to greatly speed things up.  I'm not clear on which 
plex86 this kernel module comes from, and I also have heard mixed reports of 
it either not working, or working but not making a big speed difference.

>
> yapp, I saw that, too. I tried bochs recently, and if I remember
> correctly, bochs fails to start, if plex86 is not available ---
> allthough "bochs _suggests_ plex86-kernel-src", not _depends on_.
> Nosing around on the bochs website, it seems to me that including
> plex86 is a relatively new feature. The installation of
> plex86-kernel-src is cream, including compiling, packaging and
> installing the kernel modules --- on 2.4 kernel, that is. Anyway,
> I did not get it to work on my 2.6.x kernel.
>
>
> So, yes these are different items, but no, bochs won't do
> without, it seems.
>
> Cheers,
> Erich

Bochs runs just fine without plex86 - it used to panic if it didn't find it, 
but you can continue past this panic.  The most recent updates to the debian 
packages removed the panic in place of an informational message.

Josh