Q: What is plex86? Plex86 is an Open Source x86 PC virtualization program which let's you concurrently run multiple x86 operating systems and corresponding software on your x86 machine. It is distributed under the GNU LGPL license. Q: What is the host OS? The host operating system is the primary OS you run on your real PC when you boot it. Q: What is a guest OS? A guest operating system is any OS you run in a virtual machine (VM). Q: What guest OSes does plex86 run? Look in the file 'GUESTS' in the top level directory of the plex86 source distribution for current info. Q: What if my guest OS does not run? For now, you will have to wait. We are in a period of architectural redesign. This is more important than getting more OSes running. At some pointer after the new architecture is in place, we can attempt to get more OSes working in plex86. Q: What kind of technology does plex86 use? Virtualization. In short, plex86 sets up a separate environment for each virtual machine, including its own page tables and segment descriptors, such that the guest OS can run natively without interfering with the host OS. As the guest OS can not drive the same hardware as the host OS, nor modify system registers use by the host, instructions which do are trapped and emulated. Therefore, plex86 provides a suite of hardware emulation for common PC peripheral devices. Virtualization incorporates native execution and emulation, to provide a complete Virtual Machine (VM). Q: Will plex86 run on non-x86 machines? No. Plex86 uses and depends on the native processor, to run most code. The code is strictly tied to the IA32 x86 architecture. Non x86 architectures are beyond the scope of this project. The subject has been brought up many times on the developer's list. Please don't bring it up again. Q: How does plex86 relate to bochs? Bochs is a portable x86 PC emulation program. It operates completely in user space, and doesn't make use of native x86 execution. Bochs is now LGPL, much thanks to MandrakeSoft, makers of the Linux-Mandrake distribution. Some of the bochs code was borrowed to make plex86. Q: Will plex86 offer similar capabilities as the commercial VM product from VMware? One of the goals of plex86 is to provide an efficient VM which can run multiple OSes on your x86 computer. In this area, plex86 will server similar needs as VMware. But plex86 also has much potential to be used as a debug environment for OS and driver developers, because we can export and offer an extensible debug interface. One that can be modified and enhanced by developers, since plex86 is Open Source. Q: What host OSes is plex86 ported to? Only Linux right now. Q: Who develops plex86? Look in the file 'CONTRIBUTORS' for a list of some of the developers. Q: What language is plex86 written in. Mostly C. All new code should be written in C. Some user space plugins are written in C++, because they were shared from bochs. Do NOT write any new additional code in C++. Many of the same arguments apply, as to why the Linux kernel is not written in C++. See the following link for such discussion. http://www.tux.org/lkml/index.html#s1-4 Some components of plex86 user space could conceivably be moved to monitor space to improve efficiency. Therefore, we need to be compatible with Linux kernel space, so don't use C++ for this reason either.