Installing ReactOS
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Contents
Installing ReactOS on a real machine
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Installing ReactOS on the Bochs emulator
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Bochs
Bochs (pronounced "box") is an emulator written for the PC. It can run on both DOS/Windows and Linux operating systems. It emulates an x86 hardware system and has emulation for the 386, 486 and Pentium CPUs. It also provides IO port and BIOS emulation. Bochs can run Linux, DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT 4, ReactOS and many other operating systems. The software was initially written by Kevin Lawton and is now maintained by the Bochs SourceForge project. Although this project provides the latest Bochs binaries, we recommend that you test ReactOS with the Bochs binaries provided by our reactos.com download page.
Downloading and Using Bochs with ReactOS
Downloading Bochs
The reactos.com site provides several Bochs distributions: ReactOS disk images only.
These downloads are available from the same page as the ReactOS binaries on reactos.com (under Software, ReactOS).
If you want to use an emulator other than Bochs, then the disk images only download would be more useful. Disk images only are also useful if you want to try out a newer version of ReactOS and already have Bochs. The Bochs only download is useful for when an updated version of the Bochs emulator is available on the reactos.com site.
Using MTools
MTools are used to copy files to and from the disk images. Run mtinst.bat to have MTools configure properly. This batch file copies the mtools.exe file to the various MTools commands (eg. mcopy, mmd). These files are used by binst.bat (used to update the ReactOS files on the virtual disk).
To upgrade the ReactOS files on the virtual disk, copy the ReactOS binary distribution directory (named reactos) into the directory where Bochs is installed. Then run binst.bat to copy the new files into the virtual disk (be sure to have run mtinst.bat at some time in the past before doing this).
Running ReactOS under Bochs
Run the freeldr.bat file in the Bochs directory. To switch to booting with FreeDOS, run the freedos.bat file.
Installing ReactOS on the VMware emulator
VMware
Virtual Computing
A Virtual Machine is a software program much like an emulator that provides a virtual hardware platform. Software instructions that would be run on hardware are caught buy the virtual environment and depending on the instruction are either run on the native CPU or emulated in software. Virtual Computing allows for much fast operation then standard emulation as a result of the ability to run the majority of the instructions on the Native CPU. This process allows you to run a virtual computer in software on your computer. The performance of the software on a virtual computer will be only slightly slower than on real hardware. Overhead can still be a problem for disk IO and CPU instructions that must be emulated but in general it is much faster then a total emulation system.
Advantages:
- You can try out a completely different operating system without tinkering with your real system.
- You can run potentially unstable software without the fear of damaging your real system.
- For operating systems developers, it provides a way to debug the system without constant reboots.
- The performace is much faster then a true emulator such as bochs.
VMware itself
VMware is a popular commercial virtual machine for the x86 CPU family. It can run on Windows NT, 2K, XP and Linux/FreeBSD. It also provides IO port, BIOS emulation, networking and sound support. VMware can run a number of different "guest" operating systems including *DOS, Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP, ReactOS, Free Unices (*BSD, Linux) as well as many others. VMware is free for 30 days, after that you must purchase a license from their website.
Limitations
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