Ketil Froyn wrote:
>
> Hi.
> I just thought I'd put in a couple of things I'd like to see in freemware
> before it gets impossible because of some design decision or something :)
>
> First, I've been trying vmware, and I think it's a hassle that you can't
> use something like mtools or 'mount -o loop' to access the virtual disk.
> Granted, they save a lot of diskspace by only keeping the filesize of the
> virtual disk as big as necessary, but I had some serious hassle installing
> windows, which I only had on disk, and rawdisk access didn't work. So, I
> propose to have an option, one for using vmware-style disk, which
> grows as necessary (if anyone wants to implement that), and one for a
> full-size file that may be accessed with mtools or mounted (should be
> easier to make, no?).
I share the same feelings. If we start with the devices from
bochs, then mtools and loopback mounts will work right away.
If we add sparse disk image capability, I suppose we could
even add some code to mtools to handle it, though the loopback
would be a different story.
Offering a small utility to convert a non-sparse to/from
a sparse disk image would be very helpful as well.
> Also, I think it would be great with a GGI-version
> (http://www.ggi-project.org/). Of course, it is always a hassle with those
> extra libraries you have to download and install when you install a new
> program, but personally I think GGI is worth it. It allows the same
> program to run in a window under X, on the console (either on top of
> SVGAlib or on a framebuffer device), and even on glide targets. If vmware
> had this, I could have run windows on my voodooII on my second screen,
> effectively having X on one screen and windows on the other. :)
> It can also 'emulate' any amount of colors on any bitdepth, so you could
> run windows in it with 32bit colors even though your X server only runs in
> 16bit mode. May not look great, but it works :)
Humm. I didn't know about GGI. Looks like a pretty cool way to
abstract the GUI code while still using features such as direct
video access when they exist/are supported.
Hey, what do you folks think? Can someone look into GGI more
closely and offer some comments. I'm kinda tied up with adding
Pentium emulation to bochs.
-Kevin
