ReactOS and QEMU
================

For  some  reasons I  decided  that  I need  to  be  able to  run  some
Windows-based  software on  my  OpenPOWER  workstation. This  operating
system used to  run on the PowerPC  but these times are  gone. The Wine
[1] does not run outside the x86 world, too.

So  the  only   option  is  emulation.  I  decided  to   run  the  free
re-implementation of Windows NT, the ReactOS [2]. It's not complete nor
stable but it is good enough to run some things. It is, of course, slow
as the  e is no hardware  acceleration (the host and  emulated CPUs are
very different).

It  is   actually  not  so  hard   to  make  the  thing   run  on  your
PowerPC/OpenPOWER workstation if you OS includes the QEMU [3]:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
#! /bin/bash
qemu-system-i386 -L . -m 1024M -cdrom ReactOS-0.4.11.iso -hda reactosdisk.img -boot d -serial file:ReactOS.log -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net user -rtc base=localtime -name ReactOS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

So, you  only need to create  the reactosdisk.img drive via  QEMU tools
and  to download  the  ReactOS-*.iso disk  image. By  the  way, if  you
wish  to  install  the  ReactOS  on  your  disk  the  do  not  use  the
ReactOS-*-Live.iso file. It runs well as a live CD but it fails when it
has to run the installer.

The  ReactOS includes  a simple  but nice  Application Catalog  program
which  can download  and  install  a lot  of  open  source or  freeware
software  tools -  from WWW  browsers to  office software.  One can  of
course download and add more.

It if relatively stable (I have experienced just one BSOD so far).


References:

[1] http://winehq.org
[2] http://reactos.org
[3] http://qemu.org