[PLUG] VMWare

[Phil Tomson]

On 20 Jun 2003, Steven A. Adams wrote:

> On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 21:49, Rich Shepard wrote:
> > On 20 Jun 2003, Steven A. Adams wrote:
> >
> > > Anybody use VMWare to manage Windows installations from a real OS
> > > (*nix). For those that do, in your honest opinion, is it worth $279.00?
> >
> > Steve,
> >
> >   I'm not sure I know just what you're asking. I have vmware installed here
> > because my legacy GIS application and my GPS mission planning/differential
> > correction software run only on Microsoft. Is it worth it to me? Yup.
> >
> >   I started with the pre-1.0 beta versions (I think the build number was in
> > two digits) and I've paid for upgrades for each major release. Because of
> > vmware I don't need another box running Microsoft and I don't need to dual
> > boot. I can transfer data back and forth via samba and my two apps are there
> > when I need them. Otherwise, they just take up a 2G partition on one of the
> > hard drives.
> >
>
> I'm just asking if those that use it like and rely on it enough to pay
> the price. Unfortunately, the one piece of software that I have that
> requires it needs Win2k and I'm tired of the dual-boot.


There might be a couple of other options, but probably would take a lot
more work to setup: bochs ( http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ ) and plex86
( http://plex86.sourceforge.net/ ).  Both are are open source (GPL, LGPL)

bochs wasn't being maintained for a few years, but I notice from looking
at the web page just now that there have been a couple of releases this year,
so it appears to be ative again.  bochs, is an x86 emulator, so it's gonna
be slow.

plex86 is closer to what VMWare does, so it'll be the faster of the two.
As I recall, the plex86 developer was complaining a while back about
VMWare stealing ideas from plex86.  Apparently to run Windoze with plex86
you need to run it in combination with bochs - see the web page for more
details.


Phil