OSDev.org

Which one do you use? Or like better?

Feel free to rant about them, or post why you use a certain one (in fact, please do so)...

I myself use VMware.


-JL

I generally use BOCHS because of the debugger and the console that I can output to. However I often test on Virtual PC 2007, VMWare and Qemu. For actually running an OS like Linux (not testing) I prefer Virtual PC. It seems to be the fastest.

i havent done much in virual machines, but of those i have tryed, vmware was the only one i got to work...

I used VMWare on my old XP box, but now that I have a Mac I use Parallels (VMWare Fusion was just taking too long to ship).

I used bochs, but I found it wasn't runnig at correct speed, It was too slow or too fast. And my kernel was buggy but it worked correctly in bochs (? ).
So now I use Virtual PC, it's faster, but sometimes I get virtual machine internal errors. But right now my kernel seems correct and virtual pc does it honnor.

I usually use QEMU, because I like being able to do all the configuration at the command line. However, it doesn't compile with my newer GCC, so I'm stuck with Bochs....

I was using QEMU, but I've switched to InnoTek VirtualBox.

Why?
- I don't need the debugging features of QEMU and Bochs anymore since my OS's internal functions suffice.
- VirtualBox seems to be faster than QEMU and Bochs (I'm talking about Out-of-the-box performance).
- VirtualBox is easier to configure than QEMU and Bochs (adding new hardware is only a few clicks away).
- VirtualBox seems to have a lower memory footprint than the other larger emulators (VMware, Virtual PC) and therefore is faster than these when booting and saving/restoring snapeshots, etc.

I use all of them. But I prefer bochs, when it comes to debugging the kernel, so I voted for bochs.

i don't use any

Bochs, QEmu, VirtualPC. The more platforms you test, the more chance of finding out about issues.

Bochs for debugging, QEMU for "speedy testing" and real hardware for real testing. I do not use MS VPC for my kernel because it doesnt work right.

Regards
inflater

inflater wrote:Bochs for debugging, QEMU for "speedy testing" and real hardware for real testing. I do not use MS VPC for my kernel because it doesnt work right.

Regards
inflater

Why don't you find out what is wrong with your kernel then?

Bochs for debugging, anything for testing. The only cases I've found that were a problem were things I didn't test in bochs, so I just need to fix my testing, not the code. The only thing that was actually wrong with the code (not just setup/test related) was writing MSRs my processor didn't get. I was intending to test it on others just now. On my laptop (p4) it works for the RM/PM hello world + i586 kernel and on my main box (p-d) it runs all three hello worlds (rm/pm/lm) and the i586 kernel. The other kernels don't work in bochs either so that's a good reason they wouldn't work.

Just don't use the bochs advantages when you code. Know what you're doing and don't assume anything you aren't sure about.

Tyler wrote:

inflater wrote:Bochs for debugging, QEMU for "speedy testing" and real hardware for real testing. I do not use MS VPC for my kernel because it doesnt work right.

Regards
inflater

Why don't you find out what is wrong with your kernel then?

I use Bochs and VirtualBox. I also stopped using VPC2004 because it "doesn't work right". It mishandles V86 mode extensions (even when using a host processor which supports them) and doesn't like setting up a 'safe' TSS for handling double faults. When I had both of these problems, Googling revealed that many others had the same problems, so I guess it wasn't my kernel that was the issue.

Cheers,
Adam

AJ wrote:

Tyler wrote:

inflater wrote:Bochs for debugging, QEMU for "speedy testing" and real hardware for real testing. I do not use MS VPC for my kernel because it doesnt work right.

Regards
inflater

Why don't you find out what is wrong with your kernel then?

I use Bochs and VirtualBox. I also stopped using VPC2004 because it "doesn't work right". It mishandles V86 mode extensions (even when using a host processor which supports them) and doesn't like setting up a 'safe' TSS for handling double faults. When I had both of these problems, Googling revealed that many others had the same problems, so I guess it wasn't my kernel that was the issue.

Cheers,
Adam

Well that is fair enough, i have had problems with older version's of Bochs and QEMU, but instead of not using them, i simply upgrade. Virtual PC continues to be the most realistic (real hardware like) Virtual Machine.