01/23/2006, 8:10am, EST
Monday, January 23rd
WinTel 2.01 available for Intel-Macs
With the availability of the new Intel-based Macs, x86 instructions no longer have to be emulated with Bochs, drastically enhancing performance, according to the company. OpenOSX claims that WinTel 2.0.1 on the Intel is "the fastest version ever, which can boot Windows 98 in as little as 15 seconds on the Intel 2GHz Duo iMac with the stock 512MB of RAM installed." WinTel contains three sets of binaries optimized for G4, G5 and Intel processors. The 2.0.0 version eliminates a potential issue when using network support, resolves a startup issue on some G4s, and fixes sometimes failing to properly detect an Intel machine (some Intel Macintoshes may report that they are "i386" while others might report "pentium4").
OpenOSX WinTel includes 10 ready-to-use disk images of open source x86-based operating systems including: FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux, FreeDOS and more. The product also features a stand-alone application featuring a drag-install backed with limited installation support. WinTel 2.0.1 has been successfully tested running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2K, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows XP Professional.
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"And as long as the binaries are native (whatever the program - however slow) it would be running native, wouldn't it?"
OpenOSX has a long history of running afoul with the open-source community, as they (at least, according to accusation) seem to repackage open-source software with the occassional failure to give credit where credit may be due.
If you want to try it out, I'd recommend actually downloading Bochs (the emulator OpenOSX uses) from SourceForge and putting it through it's paces before buying into this product.
Anyways, buyer beware! I'll be waiting for a more reputable company to come out with an emulator before I start spending.
Since OpenOSX is nothing more than a Cocoa frontend for Bochs, perhaps someone with the technical know how would care to get Bochs up and running on an Intel iMac and report on the actual performance. It would cost nothing and would either prove or (more than likely) disprove this organisations claims. They have a bad rep over a long time so I'm extremely doubtful that they are telling the truth.
Wait a little longer and we will see something that would be working fast on an Intel Mac like on any other PC.
I don't have a nice shiny new iMac/tel to test it on, though, so I can't comment on its actual performance.
Also, they claim that its 2-4 times faster that 2.0. That may be the case. Who knows how slow 2.0 was?
And install times is not an indication of actual usage ability. If it takes 30 minutes to launch Word, that's one thing. Taking thirty hours for a one-time-only install, who cares.
The product doesn't just advertise native code, it advertises native performance. This product clearly does not perform as native, even if it's code is "native" by Mr. Lacock's definition. This is a clear-cut case of false advertising.