MS Office for Linux?

Kevin P. Lawton kevin at mandrakesoft.com
Mon Apr 3 14:33:23 EDT 2000


Peter Jon White wrote:
> 
> What is plex86?

The web pointer is http://www.plex86.org.  Anyways,
it's an open source virtual machine project.  We're
making a program that does something like that from
VMware.

In short, a lot of code is run natively, a few instructions
are emulated as are the IO devices.  This creates an
environment where the OS you run inside it, thinks it
has control of it's own (virtual) PC.  This is all
done at the processor level - no ABI emulation or
anything like that.

My goal is that by the end of the year, Windows
will be a button on the Linux desktop.  :^)  When/if
you need to run your legacy software, you fire up plex86,
and Windows runs in an X-window under Linux.  No
dual-boot needed.

It's also been talked about also, adding the capability
to let the OS running in the VM (virtual machine)
drive certain hardware (like winmodems) that Linux
can't.

My other project was bochs, a complete software x86 PC emulator
(http://www.bochs.com).  Fortunately it's now open source, so we can
use as much of it as needed in plex86 (much thanks to MandrakeSoft whom
I now work for, ie Linux-Mandrake).

-Kevin
-
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the
message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).



More information about the Discuss mailing list