Bochs

Bochs

Bochs

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Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (including protected mode), memory, disks, display, Ethernet, BIOS and common hardware peripherals of PCs.

Quick Facts Original author(s), Developer(s) ...

Many guest operating systems can be run using the emulator including DOS, several versions of Linux, Xenix, Microsoft Windows, BSDs and Rhapsody OS (precursor of Mac OS X Public Beta). Bochs runs on many host operating systems, including Android OS, Linux, macOS, PlayStation 2, Windows, and Windows CE along with its derivatives.

Bochs is mostly used for operating system development (when an emulated operating system crashes, it does not crash the host operating system, so the emulated OS can be debugged) and to run other guest operating systems inside already running host operating systems. It can also be used to run older software — such as PC games — which will not run on non-compatible, or too fast computers.

History

Bochs started as a program with a commercial license, at the price of US$25, for use as-is. If a user needed to link it to other software, that user would have to negotiate a special license. That changed on 22 March 2000, when Mandrakesoft (later Mandriva) bought Bochs from lead developer Kevin Lawton and released it for Linux under the GNU Lesser General Public License.[1] Support for hosting on Windows XP ended with version 2.6.10.

Use

Bochs emulates the hardware needed by PC operating systems, including hard drives, CD drives, and floppy drives. It doesn't utilize any host CPU virtualization features, therefore is slower than most virtualization (as opposed to emulation) software. It provides additional security by completely isolating the guest OS from the hardware. Bochs also has extensive debugging features. It is widely used for OS development, as it removes the need for constant system restarts (to test code).

BFE, described as a "Graphical Debugger Interface for the Bochs PC Emulator", is a graphical interface for the debugger within the Bochs PC emulator that makes it possible to debug software step-by-step at the instruction and register level, much like Borland's Turbo Debugger.[6]

Emulated hardware

More information Class, Device ...

References

  1. [1]
    Gael Duval (March 23, 2000). "MandrakeSoft buys Bochs for Linux and commits it to Open Source". Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  2. [2]
    Thinking inside and outside the Bochs with Kevin Lawton, By Ken Hess, August 25, 2011, ZDNet
  3. [3]
    Bochs was written by Kevin Lawton starting in 1994., 1.1. What is Bochs?, Chapter 1. Introduction to Bochs, Bochs User Manual
  4. [4]
    Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
  5. [5]
    "Features". bochs.sourceforge.io. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  6. [6]
    "BFE : about". SourceForge. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  7. [7]
    "Bochs User Manual - Features". Retrieved 2016-04-06.
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Bochs, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.