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Made some corrections; separated "Will Bochs Work for Me" into two sections:

Browse Source 
* Is Bochs Right For Me?
and
* Will Bochs Work For Me?
This provided a better transition between "Who Uses Bochs?" and "Will Bochs Work For Me?"
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David Guarneri 2002-11-03 20:05:02 +00:00
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bochs/doc/docbook/user/user.dbk
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<!--
================================================================
doc/docbook/user/user.dbk
$Id: user.dbk,v 1.49 2002-11-03 08:38:33 ndavidg Exp $
$Id: user.dbk,v 1.50 2002-11-03 20:05:02 ndavidg Exp $
This is the top level file for the Bochs Users Manual.
================================================================
@ -168,43 +168,39 @@ There may be as many uses of Bochs as there are users. Do you want to run
your old DOS games? Or learn to program under Linux, without leaving your
Windows desktop? Or reverse engineer your printer driver? You decide.
</para>
</section> <!-- end of Introduction:Who uses Bochs? section -->
<section><title>Will it work for me?</title>
<section><title>Is Bochs right for me?</title>
<para>
Bochs is very useful for some applications, and not well suited to others.
This section tries to answer the question, "Will Bochs work for me?"
This section tries to answer the question, "Is Bochs right for me?"
</para>
<para>Bochs may or may not be right for you, depending on what it is you want to do. Perhaps all you want to do is run one or two applications native to Microsoft Windows on Linux, or vice-versa. Perhaps your biggest concern is speed and performance. Maybe you don't mind tweaking a few files here and there when you want another application to work in that setting. In these cases where the objective is to simulate x86 hardware on an x86, Plex86, Wine, and VMware might be your best options.</para>
<para>Bochs may or may not be right for you, depending on what it is you want to do. Perhaps all you want to do is run one or two applications native to Microsoft Windows on Linux, or vice-versa. Perhaps your biggest concern is speed and performance. Maybe you don't mind tweaking a few files here and there when you want another application to work in that setting. In cases where the objective is to simulate x86 hardware on an x86, Plex86, Wine, and VMware might be your best options.</para>
<para>
On the other hand, perhaps you have a vital application running on an older operating system that only runs well on old hardware. You are concerned that the life cycle of this hardware is coming to an end, and backup and restoration tools no longer suffice for the amount of data that you have. You need to transfer backup disk images over a network, and want to use modern procedures for hardware maintenance. Perhaps the application is important enough to run on a larger computer, such as a 64-bit machine, or even a mainframe. Bochs would be an excellent option in such a scenario.
On the other hand, perhaps you have a vital application running on an older operating system that only runs well on old hardware. You are concerned that the life cycle of this hardware is coming to an end, and your backup and restoration hardware and tools no longer suffice for the amount of data that you have. You need to transfer backup disk images over a network, and want to use modern procedures for hardware maintenance. Perhaps the application is important enough to run on a larger computer, such as a 64-bit machine, or even a mainframe. Bochs would be an excellent option in such a scenario.
</para>
<para>
Perhaps your objective is to debug software or hardware drivers. Bochs offers a controlled environment that can better assit you in determining cause and effect relationships. You can take snapshots that show you what is going on behind the scenes. You can isolate the line that caused that crash. You can have multiple images and compare them under a microscope. In these situation, Bochs could save you time and resources.
Perhaps your objective is to debug software or hardware drivers. Bochs offers a controlled environment that can better assist you in determining cause and effect relationships. You can take snapshots that show you what is going on behind the scenes. You can isolate the line that caused that crash. You can have multiple images and compare them under a microscope. In these situation, Bochs could save you time and resources.
</para>
<para>
Computer Technology changes faster than any other field. It is very easy to forget transitional software that came and went. But history is important to all fields, and to build on the future, it is important to understand the past. Computer programmers, however, do not have the same advantage as an architect or painter. Programmers cannot take a trip to France or Greece and turn it into a learning experience. Our history is forgotten on corroding floppies and malfunctioning hardware. Bochs gives you the benefit of having one or more complete environments where you can understand firsthand the behavior of operating systems and programs.
Information Technology changes faster than any other field. It is very easy to forget transitional software that came and went. But history is important to all fields, and to build on the future, it is important to understand the past. Computer programmers, however, do not have the same advantage as an architect, who can, for example, take a trip to Greece and touch a pillar. Much of the history of Computer Science is left on corroding floppies and malfunctioning hardware. Bochs gives you the benefit of having one or more complete environments where you can understand firsthand the behavior of operating systems and programs. This cannot be achieved with an "emulator" such as Wine.
</para>
</section> <!-- end of Introduction:Is Bochs right for me? section -->
<section><title>Will it work for me?</title>
<para>
Bochs is completely self-contained. Software does not communicate directly to the host computer. This is Bochs strength, but it is also its greatest weakness, for there is a severe performance penalty as a result. You are basically taking a virtual computer home with very basic hardware, no recovery/setup disks, and no full-featured operating system. Before you download it, understand that you may spend at least the next two days setting it up. As of the time of this writing, there is no user-friendly gui or wizard to assist in the setup process. Everything must be done by configuring files in a text editor and reading documentation.
Whether Bochs works for you depends on your host hardware, host operating system, guest operating system, guest software, and your ability to work in a command-line environment using documentation. There is no gui or wizard to help you through the setup process. You do not get a recovery or installation disk to assist you in the process of installing a guest operating system. Bochs only provides you with the "virtual hardware", and it is up to you to do the rest.
</para>
<!--
<para>
If you are running on a x86 hardware, you have a range of choices.
Check the installation section for your host platform to see what
options Bochs supports on your platform<footnote>
<para>
&FIXME; Well, it will when it has been written.
</para>
</footnote>. Bochs will run on Windows, Linux,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or BeOS. If the most important factor is speed, you may
want to try a virtualization product instead of Bochs (VMware, plex86).
<para>Bochs will run on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or BeOS. If you are running on x86 hardware, you have a range of choices. Check the installation section for your host platform to see what options Bochs supports on your platform. If the most important factor is speed, you may want to try a virtualization product instead of Bochs (VMware, plex86).
</para>
<para>
@ -213,7 +209,6 @@ running x86 software. Bochs has been known to work on Solaris (Sparc),
Linux (PowerPC/Alpha), MacOS (PowerPC), IRIX (MIPS), BeOS (PowerPC), Digital
UNIX (Alpha), and AIX (PowerPC).
</para>
-->
<para>
You can also find more detailed testing information on the testing