ReactOS and QEMU
================
For some reasons I decided that I need to be able to run some
Windows-based software on my OpenPOWER workstation. This operating
system used to run on the PowerPC but these times are gone. The Wine
[1] does not run outside the x86 world, too.
So the only option is emulation. I decided to run the free
re-implementation of Windows NT, the ReactOS [2]. It's not complete nor
stable but it is good enough to run some things. It is, of course, slow
as the e is no hardware acceleration (the host and emulated CPUs are
very different).
It is actually not so hard to make the thing run on your
PowerPC/OpenPOWER workstation if you OS includes the QEMU [3]:
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#! /bin/bash
qemu-system-i386 -L . -m 1024M -cdrom ReactOS-0.4.11.iso -hda reactosdisk.img -boot d -serial file:ReactOS.log -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net user -rtc base=localtime -name ReactOS
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So, you only need to create the reactosdisk.img drive via QEMU tools
and to download the ReactOS-*.iso disk image. By the way, if you
wish to install the ReactOS on your disk the do not use the
ReactOS-*-Live.iso file. It runs well as a live CD but it fails when it
has to run the installer.
The ReactOS includes a simple but nice Application Catalog program
which can download and install a lot of open source or freeware
software tools - from WWW browsers to office software. One can of
course download and add more.
It if relatively stable (I have experienced just one BSOD so far).
References:
[1]
http://winehq.org
[2]
http://reactos.org
[3]
http://qemu.org
