Qemu

[Ryuu]

I have been browsing these forums for the past week and finally decided to create an account as i too am waiting for the preorder so i can hand over the cash. But i just wanted to ask if its possible to use Qemu on Pandora? the ppl over at WINEHQ said that Wine does not emulate the cpu so Wine cant run on an ARM cpu it need a x86. But Qemu does emulate a cpu so would i be able to emulate a x86 cpu on the pandora using Qemu and then run Wine over that ? will this use up lots of processing power? i just wanna play stronghold crusaders extreme on pandora while im on the train the game runs at 800x600 so not much downscaling when using the pandora screen :rolleyes:. Soz if i sound like a nub i dont know much about these things

 

[sindbad]

It should be possible to run wine over qemu on ARM, but it won't be fast enough for anything.

 

[Ryuu]

Yes i understand that layering will mean more cpu usage but what if the game itself runs on very low system specs 500mhz, 4mb video

 

[Spray190]

or maybe even say a game that requires a pentium 90 and 16mb of ram, just wanting to know if its doable

 

[kloplop321]

yeah, because it would have to do near CPU emulation
HOWEVER you can always run a virtual machine, but like on the PS3, you wight as well be running on a pentium 3

 

[Tinnus]

x86 emulation will be too slow for anything above a 386, end of story.

 

[Squidge]

Your probably better off using dosbox or bochs than a qemu/wine combo.

 

[cosurgi]

Your probably better off using dosbox or bochs than a qemu/wine combo.

Hmmm... I will have to try my qemu image in which I have installed System Shock 1. Maybe it will be actually playable? Who knows....

 

[Solontus]

I remember seeing a post in another thread saying that with qemu optimized, it would be great with wine since wine is a wrapper and wouldn't slow down qemu. I also remember that the person who posted it said with this combo, win95 could possibly run at an acceptable speed. Maybe with a good dev it could be done?

 

[sterling976]

I remember seeing a post in another thread saying that with qemu optimized, it would be great with wine since wine is a wrapper and wouldn't slow down qemu. I also remember that the person who posted it said with this combo, win95 could possibly run at an acceptable speed. Maybe with a good dev it could be done?

Hmm.. As long as you're emulating the x86 processor in qemu, why not just install Windows in it, instead of running another linux instance + wine? I'd be interested to see a performance comparison between linux/wine and Windows running in qemu. That said, I agree with the posters above that even though the Pandora's the most powerful device I've seen envisioned in its class (gotta be careful about the wording -- Pandora hasn't been delivered yet ), any attempt at emulating Windows within the native OS is going to be way too slow to be usable for gaming, especially in QEMU.

Heck, even using VMWare to emulate a Win98 system for running Tomb Raider 2 on my laptop was problematic, and it's pretty modern -- ~2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, etc.

 

[sindbad]

It's not going to work at acceptable speed. Qemu is the fastest cross-architecture emulator out there (bochs is too slow, dosbox is very limited) and it would still be much too slow to do anything useful.

The advantage of using wine as opposed to windows in a VM is saving a lot of ram and some cpu time.

Bottom line, not feasible.

 

[sterling976]

I see we're in full agreement on most points. Maybe I should have added that I ended up using wine to get TR2 working just fine on that laptop.

The advantage of using wine as opposed to windows in a VM is saving a lot of ram and some cpu time.

Agreed, but only if you can run wine on the operating system sitting on bare metal. It's been said elsewhere on these forums that Wine is Not an Emulator, and thus won't work on the Pandora natively (unless you happen to know someone at Microsoft who's willing to leak .dll sources so we can re-compile them for ARM?). Earlier posts in this topic were asking about running wine under QEMU (which doesn't really make any sense, since Wine is Also Not An Operating System), and the only way to do this is to emulate an x86 platform in QEMU, run a second instance of linux inside that, and run wine on top of it. Once you've gone to that length, I think you'd do just as well (performance-wise) running Windows in QEMU, which is to say, not very well at all. Unusable, in fact.

Now, if someone can show me benchmarks comparing Windows running under QEMU vs Linux/WINE running under QEMU on similar host hardware/software, I'd be willing to accept one approach as superior to the other. Then again, I guess if I were really that interested, I'd take a few hours and run the tests myself. Either way, I think we can all agree that such a setup won't be usable on Pandora.

 

[sindbad]

Agreed, but only if you can run wine on the operating system sitting on bare metal. It's been said elsewhere on these forums that Wine is Not an Emulator, and thus won't work on the Pandora natively (unless you happen to know someone at Microsoft who's willing to leak .dll sources so we can re-compile them for ARM?). Earlier posts in this topic were asking about running wine under QEMU (which doesn't really make any sense, since Wine is Also Not An Operating System), and the only way to do this is to emulate an x86 platform in QEMU, run a second instance of linux inside that, and run wine on top of it. Once you've gone to that length, I think you'd do just as well (performance-wise) running Windows in QEMU, which is to say, not very well at all. Unusable, in fact.

Now, if someone can show me benchmarks comparing Windows running under QEMU vs Linux/WINE running under QEMU on similar host hardware/software, I'd be willing to accept one approach as superior to the other. Then again, I guess if I were really that interested, I'd take a few hours and run the tests myself. Either way, I think we can all agree that such a setup won't be usable on Pandora.

No, no, no! The idea was not running an x86 linux on qemu. Qemu has another mode of operation, as a wrapper that only emulates a cpu, nothing else. Basically a dynarec.

Still unusable, though.

 

[crasherball]

thats actually what i wanna do
I want to use a windows-program on my pandora that way
Im going to install windows with the help of qemu or any other VM

 

[dentrado]

I remember seeing a post in another thread saying that with qemu optimized, it would be great with wine since wine is a wrapper and wouldn't slow down qemu. I also remember that the person who posted it said with this combo, win95 could possibly run at an acceptable speed. Maybe with a good dev it could be done?

If you run wine in qemu you wouldn't run win95 at all, you run linux+wine?

 

[sterling976]

No, no, no! The idea was not running an x86 linux on qemu. Qemu has another mode of operation, as a wrapper that only emulates a cpu, nothing else. Basically a dynarec.

Hmm.. Are you referring to this? The documentation's a bit vague -- if you hadn't pointed out the difference, I would have skimmed that section without noting it. Actually, that's exactly what I did. In any event, I stand corrected.

Still unusable, though.

Quite, but it might be a fun exercise for someone to try.

 

[AireTamStorm]

x86 emulation will be too slow for anything above a 386, end of story.

Not to mention that you're essentially running a virtual machine on top of that x86 emulator in the case of WINE....

== dead slow.

 

[kattle87]

If someone wants to try it out... Just download QEmu for arm, QEmu for x86, run QEmu for ARM -> x86 over QEmu for x86 -> ARM, launch a (simple) program (like winamp or something stupid) with WINE, and see if it's a slideshow or it's usable We get some kind of idea of "what will be the best we can".

This is what I do have in mind:

Windows Program
----------
WINE
----------
QEmu ARM->x86
----------
QEmu x86->ARM
----------
Linux
----------
Physical PC

If someone does something like that, please post results!!!

 

[sindbad]

This is what I do have in mind:

Windows Program
----------
WINE
----------
QEmu ARM->x86
----------
QEmu x86->ARM
----------
Linux
----------
Physical PC
Much too complicated.

Windows Program / Wine / Qemu-userspace x86-ARM / Linux / Hardware was the method debated here.

@_Sterling: yes, that's what I was referring to. That's how the darwine people did it before apple switched to intel cpus.

 

[conso]

This is what I do have in mind:

Windows Program
----------
WINE
----------
QEmu ARM->x86
----------
QEmu x86->ARM
----------
Linux
----------
Physical PC
Much too complicated.

Windows Program / Wine / Qemu-userspace x86-ARM / Linux / Hardware was the method debated here.

@_Sterling: yes, that's what I was referring to. That's how the darwine people did it before apple switched to intel cpus.

I read a discussion about arm on the wine mailing-list, and that's the way they want to go - sometime. They even discussed an openGL ES backend, back then.