Emulate Mac OS X from within OS X?

I know you can't run OS X on x86 yet, otherwise I'd be able to do this in VMWare, but if I buy a Mac to do software development on, can I at least emulate the OS from within the OS?

Ever since I discovered VMWare, I haven't been able to live without it.  It's invaluable for software development.

How do "Mac Developers" do this?

Wayne
Friday, February 27, 2004

Good lord, why?

Jim
Friday, February 27, 2004

I'm not aware of a way to emulate OS X from within OS X, however you can install Linux on PPC and emulate multiple instances of OS X.

It's not even emulation as much as it's time sharing, the calls all run straight through to the processor, the Linux program just manages the instances.

Lou
Friday, February 27, 2004

That is !fantastic! Lou, is this with Bochs or something?

Why what, Jim?

Wayne
Friday, February 27, 2004

"It's not even emulation as much as it's time sharing, the calls all run straight through to the processor, the Linux program just manages the instances."

This is pretty much what VMWare does. While it virtualizes some generic hardware, when doing process-heavy tasks (with a limited amount of GUI interactivity), VMWare sessions are very close to 100% of "native" speed.

Dennis Forbes
Friday, February 27, 2004

Mol (Mac on Linux) running linux PPC can do what you ask. So you can run multiple instance of OSX within Linux. But you need to run linux this app does not work on OSX. The principle of MOL are about the same as VMWare.

Pierre-Luc
Friday, February 27, 2004

MOL is the project I was thinking of.

Lou
Friday, February 27, 2004

Awesome!  I am buying a PPC machine tommorrow.  Thanks again!

Wayne
Saturday, February 28, 2004

Lou: what you're describing *is* emulation. Problem is that too many products that call themselves emulators are actually *simulators* -- at least according to what they taught me in school. (Simulator: software-based processor+system; emulator: real processor + different hardware and/or software combination).

Running in emulation is a good idea. It is much more secure, amongst other benefits. Apple could probably make an OS X emulator using code from Classic. In fact, it might even have been better if they had just made a generic Mac emulator and let people run multiple instances of OS 9 and OS X to their heart's content. OS X 10.4 feature, anyone?

Brent Gulanowski
Sunday, February 29, 2004

Does MOL work on ANY Linux PowerPC, or only on Macs running Linux?

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Sunday, February 29, 2004

There is a lot of interesting stuff on Mac OSX, virtualization, and operating systems in general on AMit Singh's web site http://www.kernelthread.com/ 
Don't be put off by his recent /.-ings

Max

Max Hadley
Monday, March 1, 2004

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