Proposal to use Qemu fast emulator

Dear friends,

I made some screenshots of qemu, which is a free emulator released under the
GPL, in many ways comparable to VmWare:

http://www.morphix.org/modules/xoopsgallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album31

Qemu currently runs primarily under a GNU/Linux host. In the "virtualisation"
vocabulary, "host" means the hardware platform (i.e. your computer). The
"guest" is the target virtual installation (i.e OSs).

The CVS version of Qemu can run the following guests:
- GNU/linux,
- Windows 98,
- FreeBSD.

Qemu is also reported to run Win2K and WinXP guests as well. Also, according
to the compatibility charts, it should be possible to run a MacOsX guest
under a GNU/Linux (but I am not very sure).

A native port of Qemu to Win32 is in progress. (but we may never need it, this
information is for Andreas, who likes debugging under Windows :).

The advantages of running qemu under a GNU/Linux host are as follows:
- very fast processor emulation (suitable for compilation),
- support of both graphical and text modes (to test pgAdmin III display),
- network support (we can access hosts running in background using SSH).
- no need to use a special kernel like other solutions.
- wide support of OSes in the short run: Windows98/Me/2K/XP, GNU/Linux,
FreeBSD and MacOsX. Sparc will also be supported...

Qemu seems to be the "swiss nife" for pgAdmin III compilation.

In the next days, I will be preparing ready-to-run virtual discs with Redhat
9, Mandrake 10 and possibly a Suse installation. An existing system can be
converted to a virtual disc using: dd if=/dev/hd... of=hd.img bs=1024
(currently untested).

Cheers,
Jean-Michel