“OpenOSX today began shipping its WinTel 2.0 emulator software with Universal binaries, bringing nearly native emulated x86 performance to Apple’s new Intel-based Macs and allowing Mac users to run Microsoft Windows with increased speed. WinTel is designed to be an easy-to-use solution for configuring and utilizing the open-source Bochs software, which allows x86- or Pentium-based operating systems to run on Macintosh computers,” MacNN.com reports.
Wintel 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later and is available for $25 via download, while upgrades from previous versions are priced at $15.
Full article here.
More info, features, and screenshots here.
MacDailyNews Note: WinTel is a Cocoa graphical user interface used to control the included powerful underlying open-source “Bochs” x86 emulation software. WinTel 2.0 includes the following separate disk images with 10 different popular open source x86 operating systems pre-installed: FreeBSD, GNU Hurd, FreeDos, PicoBSD, Minix, NetBSD, Debian Linux, DLX Linux, Red Hat Linux, and MuLinux. WinTel 2.0 has successfully tested running Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows XP Professional.
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Last time I looked, Bochs was still an x86 Emulator, even when ran on an Intel machine, which means speeds will be nowhere near “nearly native”.
Also, this company has a nice history of ripping off open source projects like Fink and not given them any credit for their work.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/pr/openosx.php
and so it began…
How is it that this small company can get windows onto the new intel Macs within a week of their announcement and MS cannot? One would think that the creator of the OS itself would be a bit more efficient.
Great news on the speed increase. Although this is only a benefit to Mac users who need to run Windoze. Or gamers who want to play Windoze games that don’t exist on the Mac platform.
“One would think that the creator of the OS itself would be a bit more efficient.”
When it’s Microsoft, then one wouldn’t…
This isn’t even worth wasting time on muchless any money. Something better will come along soon hopefully…
Rasterbator….as long as it gets more people to buy Macs and increase our market share, who cares? If Macs capture 20% of the market, programmers will start making the great games for our platform. Huzzah!
Does it work better than Microsoft Virtual PC 7 (on PPC Macs, that is)?
Virtual PC is a memory hogging, slowly responding, crashing nightmare on a brand new iBook with a gigabyte of RAM.
So the recommendation is to just wait for the official Bochs release for Mac OS X Intel?
I realize that there a plenty of slimeballs who take open source and pass it along for money, iEmulator is another one of these products charging money where the “finished product” is almost identical to (yet still a step behind) the free open source version called “Q”, except the icons got changed. They are both Cocoa Apps too. At least he gives credit though.
Unlike Q though, this one seems to have multiprocessor support, and the USB is already built in. So it’s a few steps ahead of the QEMU project.
So the recommendation is to just wait for the official Bochs release for Mac OS X Intel?
I realize that there a plenty of slimeballs who take open source and pass it along for money, iEmulator is another one of these products charging money where the “finished product” is almost identical to (yet still a step behind) the free open source version called “Q”, except the icons got changed. They are both Cocoa Apps too. At least he gives credit though.
Unlike Q though, this one seems to have multiprocessor support, and the USB is already built in. So it’s a few steps ahead of the QEMU project.
So the recommendation is to just wait for the official Bochs release for Mac OS X Intel?
I realize that there a plenty of slimeballs who take open source and pass it along for money, iEmulator is another one of these products charging money where the “finished product” is almost identical to (yet still a step behind) the free open source version called “Q”, except the icons got changed. They are both Cocoa Apps too. At least he gives credit though.
Unlike Q though, this one seems to have multiprocessor support, and the USB is already built in. So it’s a few steps ahead of the QEMU project.
So the recommendation is to just wait for the official Bochs release for Mac OS X Intel?
I realize that there a plenty of slimeballs who take open source and pass it along for money, iEmulator is another one of these products charging money where the “finished product” is almost identical to (yet still a step behind) the free open source version called “Q”, except the icons got changed. They are both Cocoa Apps too. At least he gives credit though.
Unlike Q though, this one seems to have multiprocessor support, and the USB is already built in. So it’s a few steps ahead of the QEMU project.
“How is it that this small company can get windows onto the new intel Macs within a week of their announcement and MS cannot?”
That’s the key: SMALL. While MS wallowed in their own bureaucracy, OpenOSX updated their product. I’ll bet MS’s internal meetings to address VirtualPC haven’t even happened yet; the managers need time to polish up their PowerPoint presentations, you know.
“Virtual PC is a memory hogging, slowly responding, crashing nightmare”
Typical MS.
I agree with Pog. OpenOSX is a company with a shady history, making money over other people’s hard labor.
Bochs in itself was interesting – but nowhere near ‘native speed’.
The Intel Macs need a different solution.
What about Darwine? It’s free.
“Or gamers who want to play Windoze games that don’t exist on the Mac platform.”
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MW Lot, as in Lots of people would like to have the game selection that PCs enjoy
“Bochs in itself was interesting – but nowhere near ‘native speed’.
The Intel Macs need a different solution.”
Obviously the PPC version of Bochs or Any x86 emulator HAD to be an emulator. When I first read this, I assumed that the Universal binary contained a radically different codebase. I don’t know, but it seems to me that if it were running on a PPC it would fall back on x86 emulation, and when running an core duo it would utilize the fact that it doesn’t need to emulate.
That’s merely my assumption. In a perfect world, it would be so. But, given their history of being shady… I’m not sure what to make of their current claims.
-G-
Von Winskinheimer Productions is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Shit-tel Shit emulation for chocolate. With this new emulator, you can now have shit right on top of your chocolate. It will run at nearly 100% of the full putrid stench of actual shit and will be virtually indistinguishable from shit. It will sit right on top of chocolate. This means that you can have a yummy pile of actual chocolate working just fine, but some idiots will find the actual need to pile shit upon their chocolate to ruin the chocolatey goodness. Well, for those of you that want to punish yourselves go ahead. Those of us that have been experiencing chocolate for years and know how great it is (with no bugs or viruses) will keep using chocolate by itself and laugh at those who sit and eat shit and don’t know better.
The preceeding was an analogy, in case you missed it…
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“What about Darwine? It’s free.”
I’ve been keeping an eye on Darwine for a couple of years. It’s not ready for the masses yet.
What we want is a plug-in that will allow us to run Windows apps without Windows
Intel based PowerMacs won’t be arriving until after September 2006, because that’s when Intel will be issuing real 64 bit Core Duo’s.
Not this 32 bit watered down crapola that’s going in the new MacTels.
Oh by the way, how do you like the tiny DRM chip installed in every new MacTel?
That’s right kiddies, you wait until the universal binaries come out, they will be locked so hard to the hardware that even cloning might be a bitch.
Then of course the music labels will demand your present iTunes need to be locked to hardware.
And on and on it will go.
For those who really need to run Winblows specific apps:
The WINE project goal is basically stated in the name: “Wine Is Not an Emulator”. Codeweavers have done a decent job of making the installation and config of WINE painless for mere mortals. I’m not crazy about their commercialization of the Opensource project though.
As far as a “plug-in” allowing Mac users to just run Winblows apps on the fly, WINE/Codeweavers approach is the closest I’ve seen.
IMHO, rather than invest brain waves figuring out how to run Winblows specific apps on better OS, developers should be porting with OS specific enhancements instead.
Again, someone explain to me why they would even think of having anything to do with Microsoft installed on their computers?
Oh, and there’s one more thing®
MacDude said: “Then of course the music labels will demand your present iTunes need to be locked to hardware.”
It’s like a friend of mine once said: “When you have your money in your pocket, you’re the boss”
Get it?
Kelso said: “Again, someone explain to me why they would even think of having anything to do with Microsoft installed on their computers?”
Here, here!
Greg Nacu: Bochs is an emulator for x86 no matter what CPU you compile it on. So even when compiled on an x86, its emulating an x86, hence it is much slower. Bochs is not a virtual machine.
I say this because I’ve had plenty of experience with Bochs running under x86 Linux. Windows runs very slowly, even with a fast CPU. Quoting from the Bochs website:
“1.9.5. Tell me about performance when running Bochs.
Because Bochs emulates every x86 instruction and all the devices in a PC system, it does not reach high emulation speeds. Kevin reported approximately 1.5MIPS using Bochs on a 400MHz PII Linux machine. Users who have an x86 processor and want the highest emulation speeds may want to consider PC virtualization software such as plex86 (free software) or VMware (proprietary and commercial). Another related project is QEMU.”
Unless OpenOSX have added some new capability (which given their history, they haven’t), “Near Native” means 5-10x slower.
That said, if you really need Windows, running Win98 under Bochs is a free way of getting Windows Apps to run. And Bochs is free.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/