Qemu: a valid emulation option

In my last post I introduced ReactOS, which is a small operating system resembling Windows. However, I didn't really install it. I could have tried the live cd, but I was too lazy to do a reboot. And it was a great chance to experiment Qemu, which I had discovered recently. Qemu is a process emulator that can boot an operating system inside a window. Much like VMWare.
In the past I found a few other projects doing similar stuff (Bochs and Plex86, for example) but for the first time it worked smoothly out-of-the-box. I tried it with ReactOS and a few linux-based livecds. All of them worked perfectly, even audio and network. Well, perfectly if you don't mind the speed....which is slow. But that is to be expected in this kind of emulators. Tip: be sure to use the Qemu Accelerator module, which makes Qemu a lot faster. Without it, it's too slow to be useful.
Qemu usage is pretty straightforward. It has several command line options, but normally you can go with the simple command (for a livecd): qemu -cdrom /dev/hdb (being hdb your cdrom device).
In conclusion, Qemu is a very good piece of software and probably the best option if you don't want to buy VMWare.

Open Source Windows

Ever wanted M$ Windows to be free ? or even better, Open Source ?
You have two choices: you can wait that M$ does it, or you can try ReactOS. ReactOS is an open source initiative to create a free operating system, fully compatible with M$ Windows. Seems a very strange concept, but why not ? Linux is a free implementation of Unix...
And no, it's not just a concept...it works ! At least, what I've tried, which wasn't much...just the basic apps that came with it (notepad, explorer....). First impression: it looks like the real thing, except the four buttons on the taskbar representing four virtual desktops, which is something I never understood why M$ never implemented. I didn't try to install other applications, but trusting on their website, ReactOS can run, for example, the games Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex. I don't know if everything works smoothly, but if you don't have a M$ license and want to use a few Windows applications, you don't loose anything by trying it. The download is small and if you don't want to install it right away, they also have a livecd. And if it works you just saved some money ;)
I don't know if ReactOS developers will have any legal issues with it in the future. And I'm not saying that I feel it it's not legal. I don't. The code is not derived from Windows. It's all GPL code (they work closely with the Wine project). However, if M$ feels threatened in any way, I'm sure they can find a legal issue somewhere.