Sydney, the new Alaska!

19 Jul 2004

I decided at around lunchtime today that Sydney is the new Alaska. Random MSN conversations whilst doing “data entry” are an enthralling way to pass time… hehe. That’s about the only relevance of the news title to this post, although I still maintain it to be true. Tori was wearing 6 layers, not counting the cat worn (or endured?) as a scarf (n.b. I assume the cat was still alive. The LIVE cat was the scarf, she hadn’t killed one, so no-one go calling the RSPCA;)), whilst I was in an uberly heated office, yet still wearing 4… that means it’s cold, by my reckoning.

In my procrastination today, I discovered a cool app in PC Authority which is kind of like Bochs, only actually fastish.  Apparently. I couldn’t get it to compile out-of-the-box on my SuSE baby, but I’ll tinker with some libraries and compile options later, and post if a) I remember to and b) It’s worth “writing home” about.

The application is called qemu, and can be found at http://bellard.org/qemu/ (redirects to a freehost) to anyone who cares to look. Just for the record, there ARE versions available for Windows, so don’t go calling me an elitist Linux snob who only cares about Linux software. Just think it. Because it’s true. I couldn’t give a stuff about Windows software, unless it does something incredibly cool that I haven’t been able to do for years over here ;)

Yeah. This thing is being touted as the OSS VMWare alternative in PCAU, so we’ll see what transpires in days to come, I’d imagine.

Anyway. Enough about emulation platforms which may or may not work on my computer. There’s a lot to be said for pre-compiled software that just works, you know ;) (note to the clueless – not pre-compiled software with a fifteen page list of depedencies. I don’t enjoy that.). That, however, doesn’t appear on my newly released wishlist, because really, it’d take half the fun out of running Linux.  I might experience an increase in productivity!

Hmm. Productivity == achieved wishlist. Perhaps I should add binaries that JustWork™ to that list…

Anyway, take a look at it, even if just for fun. It’s all geek stuff, but that’s not the whole list… I was thinking in geek-mode when that list was written, tis all ;)