Bochs User Manual
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# Will it work for me?

Whether Bochs works for you depends on your host hardware, host operating system, guest operating system, guest software, and your ability to work in a command-line environment using documentation. There is no gui or wizard to help you through the setup process. You do not get a recovery or installation disk to assist you in the process of installing a guest operating system. Bochs only provides you with the "virtual hardware", and it is up to you to do the rest.

Bochs will run on Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or BeOS. If you are running on x86 hardware, you have a range of choices. Check the installation section for your host platform to see what options Bochs supports on your platform. If the most important factor is speed, you may want to try a virtualization product instead of Bochs (VMware, plex86).

If you are using a non-x86 machine, then Bochs is one of the few choices for running x86 software. Bochs has been known to work on Solaris (Sparc), GNU/Linux (PowerPC/Alpha), MacOS (PowerPC), IRIX (MIPS), BeOS (PowerPC), Digital Unix (Alpha), and AIX (PowerPC).

You can also find more detailed testing information on the testing status page on the Bochs web site.

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