Virtual machine twoOStwo is a virtualization technology for Intel x86 platform, developed by Russian company Parallels Ltd for German company NetSys GmbH. twoOStwo allows to launch several operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2 etc., simultaneously on a single computer. Read more for screenshot and download links.twoOStwo for Windows NT/2000/XP –
http://download.parallels.ru/files/twoOStwo-2-30-40B.exe
twoOStwo for Linux RPM package –
http://download.parallels.ru/files/twoOStwo-2.30.40-1.i386.rpm
Gzipped tar archive –
http://download.parallels.ru/files/twoOStwo-2.30.40.tgz
Screenshot 1280×1024
http://download.parallels.ru/img/twoOStwo.jpg
Unofficial twoOStwo site
http://www.twoostwo.org
Any hints on how it is different from, say, Bochs?
Could you review it for us so we won’t have to, Eugenia?
I am impressed. Its a ton smaller then VMWare, granted it maybe lacking some features compared to VMWare, but for my needs it is fine. Thanks for the posting!
If it’s for x86 only, then it’s most probably very different than bochs, and much more like VMWare. Though I’m just assuming here.
There are links that take you to a page to request an “evaluation key”, which it says is good for 3 months. But what then? Has anyone found a page that tells you how much this product actually costs?
Can’t get BeOS to work (MAX) :/
BeOS isnt yet supported according to the release notes.
On another note, it’s encouraging to see a small company springing out of the blue with a product this ambitious.
The competitors page shows a few of their competitors, but no benchmarks or so. It doesn’t include Xen which is fast (1) nor it doesn’t include Bochs which is a protable succesor of Plex86. The technology page is still under construction. Excuse me, i don’t find that comfortable. An evulation of 3 months OTOH, does sound nice in contrast to standards of 1 month.
1: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html
> nor it doesn’t include Bochs which is a protable succesor
> of Plex86.
Predecessor more like, since Bochs predates Plex86 by quite a while. BTW is Plex86 dead, zombie or …?
When building the kernel module for kernel 2.6.1, make fails. Is this a known problem or is there somthing wrong with my setup?
Error:
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/lib/twoOStwo/Drivers/drvMain’
Compiling 2os2_lnx.c
2os2_lnx.c:32:39: linux/modversions.h: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [2os2_lnx.o] Error 1
They can make me buy it by getting it to run BeOS
Yeah, the notes for the VM say that it only supports 2.2x and 2.4x, not 2.6x.
I do wonder , where do you buy it from?
Both projects have a different goal!
Plex86 (former FreeMWare) homepage is:
http://plex86.sf.net
Plex86 FAQ:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/plex86/plex86/Documentation/F…
Bochs FAQ:
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/faq.html
“3. Who is the author of bochs?
Kevin Lawton is the primary author of bochs. There have been bug fixes, enhancements, and code contributions from some few hundred people, so it is not possible to list them all. Recently, Kevin has been working on a PC virtualization project called plex86. In Fall 2002, he made contributed some major CPU speedups and helped with integration and debugging of the x86-64 emulation code.
[…]
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) or VMware (commercial).”
Plex86 is rather for end-user usage while Bochs is portable, useful for development, not useful for end-user usage because it is relatively slow. Bochs doesn’t even reside in kernel space and emulates a whole CPU, can be an advantage but is not an advantage for performance. Bochs isn’t about performance or user-friendliness. So comparing Bochs performance with VMware/Plex86/twoOStwo/Xen/UML which all do reside in kernel space is apples vs. oranges.
Also see:
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/introduction.html
Chose your VM wisely!
> Plex86 (former FreeMWare) homepage is:
> http://plex86.sf.net
I think you got it wrong.
The “new” plex86 at sf.net is under the MIT license and only tries to run linux by applying patches to the kernel.
Plex86 at savannah.nongnu.org is under the GPL and tries to do more or less the same as VMWare.
This thing is FAST … I tested it on a 3 GHz Windows box and Linux with XFree86 was completely usable, without any slowdown. It’s even way faster than the (imho) previously leading Virtual PC.
Now this with a GPL license and I’m really happy
I just tried it with Knoppix 3.3.
It’s reallig zakkig and snappy. WOW, I’m really impressed.
Congrats herr programmers.
@Eugenia:
also I’m astonished you haven’t reviewed it. I’ve read that the guys who did it are frim Russia too. Now get a little patriotic, will you? *please*