Re: Octave for windows using QEMU

[Michael Creel]

On Wednesday 25 May 2005 09:07, Stefan van der Walt wrote:
> On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 11:51:44AM -0400, Tom Holroyd wrote:
> > Michael Creel wrote:
> > >I just placed a special version of the Knoppix CD in the tray of a
> > >computer running windows. The CD autoruns, and starts up Knoppix running
> > >in a QEMU window.
> > >
> > >The catch is that this is all vvveerrryyy sssllooowww.
> >
> > I see the problem.  You forgot to _boot_ the Knoppix CD.  :-)
> > Seriously, it can read the windows filesystems....
>
> I think Michael was just pointing out that QEMU is a novel, if
> useless, way of running Octave under Windows.
>
> Similarly, I've had some success installing Debian and Octave under
> CooperativeLinux on a windows machine.  See
>
>  http://www.colinux.org
>
> I don't recall whether is was fast; guess I should go and do a few
> benchmarks.  Nice thing is that you can zip up your whole CoLinux
> distribution and take it from machine to machine.  But to get XWindows
> running probably won't be so easy.
>
> Regards
> Stefan

A bit more information. Past versions of Knoppix used a 2.4 kernel, built with  
HZ set to 100. As of Knoppix 3.8, the kernel is 2.6.x, built with HZ set to 
1000. Apparently, this last fact causes Knoppix to be very slow when run on 
Windows through QEMU. Older versions of Knoppix are faster, I've heard (but 
not tried myself). There is also a QEMU accelerator, which causes a dramatic 
improvement, but for the moment only runs on Linux. All of this makes me 
think that the appoach may not be useless, at least in the future. Once could 
built a 2.6 kernel with HZ set to 100, and possibly a QEMU accelerator for 
Windows will come out eventually. 

Michael



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