["VMware"] is a commercial PC emulator running on i386 compatible cpus. It allows you to run any x86 compatible OS in a kind of 'sandbox' - inside the ["VMware"] virtual machine you can run other operating systems like Windows or some other version of Linux.

Both Windows and a Linux versions are available.

["VMWare"] is not a true emulator, it doesn't emulate a CPU like Bochs does, it wraps CPU commands around... It does emulate various hardware devices like network-, graphic- and soundcards. Plex86 (see below) also uses this technique.

Bochs can run on any platform, while ["VMWare"] and Plex86 only run on x86 ["PCs"].

Current version: 4.5 Versions 3.2.0 build-2230, and 4.4, 4.5 work on Debian Sarge (other versions untested). It's available for both Windows and Linux, and costs about 400 US dollars. For more information, see http://www.vmware.com/

There are several open source projects that have a similar aim:

Other emulators include:

Related links:


(Maybe this page ought to have a more general title - "EmulationAndVirtualisation" or similar? - see also ["VMWare"])