There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Batfrog · Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:44 am

Is it possible, through one way or another, for the Raspberry Pi to run modern x86 software.

If not, is it conceivable that this support will come later as a result of official or community efforts?

chickey · Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:53 am

Chris.Rowland · Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:55 am

Batfrog said:

Is it possible, through one way or another, for the Raspberry Pi to run modern x86 software.

No.

If not, is it conceivable that this support will come later as a result of official or community efforts?

No never.

The Pi uses a totally different processor (an ARM, not an x86). It is also not powerful enough. Not enough memory or processor speed.

lewmur · Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:01 pm

Batfrog said:

Is it possible, through one way or another, for the Raspberry Pi to run modern x86 software.

If not, is it conceivable that this support will come later as a result of official or community efforts?

Not in a way that would be useful. It would require an x86 emulator or a virtual session Host package like VM or VirtualBox. Either of those solutions would require more RAM than the Pi has and the CPU would slow to a crawl.

hippy · Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:49 pm

Batfrog said:

Is it possible, through one way or another, for the Raspberry Pi to run modern x86 software.

You should be able to emulate some x86 code well enough to be useful ( Abishur has Windows 3.1 running under dosbox for example ) but that would probably not extend to what you might call "modern x86 software".

You really need to explain what you mean by "modern x86 software".

Gert van Loo · Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:50 pm

lewmur said:

Batfrog said:

Is it possible, through one way or another, for the Raspberry Pi to run modern x86 software.

If not, is it conceivable that this support will come later as a result of official or community efforts?

Not in a way that would be useful. It would require an x86 emulator or a virtual session Host package like VM or VirtualBox. Either of those solutions would require more RAM than the Pi has and the CPU would slow to a crawl.

Glacier slow craw, no: continental drift crawl.

shirro · Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:58 pm

It is totally possible to run a modern operating system on x86 on the Pi.

I am currently booting that most modern and capable of operating systems, Linux, on x86 in the Chromium web browser on a Raspberry Pi using Mr Bellard"s fine javascript x86 emulator.

I expect in a matter of hours I may have a shell prompt and I hope to edit hello_world.c and compile with tcc sometime in the next week.

BTW 3.3333Mhz Pentium with FPU bug running at 20Bogomips

[And I killed it or the Pi became unresponsive the couple of times I tried it so I don't know if you can get to a prompt or not. A challenge for another day.]

Jim Manley · Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:17 pm

shirro said:

[And I killed it or the Pi became unresponsive the couple of times I tried it so I don't know if you can get to a prompt or not. A challenge for another day.]

I don't think you can continue to call a command line interpreter waiting for user input a "prompt" under these circumstances ... it's anything but "prompt"! :D

RaspberryPie · Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:22 pm

Jim Manley said:

shirro said:

[And I killed it or the Pi became unresponsive the couple of times I tried it so I don't know if you can get to a prompt or not. A challenge for another day.]

I don't think you can continue to call a command line interpreter waiting for user input a "prompt" under these circumstances ... it's anything but "prompt"! :D

ahh but some MIGHT call the command line interface a great option for the PI. i know that i have quite a few cmd files that could run under an emulator...

so shirro, keep plugging along, would like to know of your success with this.

reiuyi · Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:48 pm

If you desperately must get x86 software on it; turn your raspberry into a thin client

RaspberryPie · Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:03 pm

well don't know about desperate but willing to bet that some enterprising ppl will come up with a way to load up the command (cmd.exe/DOS) line interface on the pi. im banking on the communities desire to prove other people ill-informed at proposing limits on hardware. just my two cents.

rmm200 · Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:08 pm

I am not at all sure the original OP understands what an X86 processor is, or what an ARM processor is. I think he expects the ARM processor to execute X86 instructions natively, and that is not possible. They are not compatible processors.

RaspberryPie · Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:12 pm

rmm200 said:

I am not at all sure the original OP understands what an X86 processor is, or what an ARM processor is. I think he expects the ARM processor to execute X86 instructions natively, and that is not possible. They are not compatible processors.

exactly, so it will come down to what is the best emulator to run abc.exe software on the pi... so far it seems that dosbox is running ok with win 3.x, so need to make that next leap to x86 emulation...

Pickle · Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:33 pm

qemu is probably a better choice for x86/windows (or any other x86 OS) emulation

RaspberryPie · Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:18 pm

Pickle said:

qemu is probably a better choice for x86/windows (or any other x86 OS) emulation

The Qemu HomePage is a good read, many thanks for pointing that out out pickle, and even though the translation hit is 20% of native processing, it still would conceiveably run x86.. Now to find that diamond who can make this happen. Any takers?

Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:12 pm

I have a train here. It's not quite the fastest bullet-train in the world, but it's pretty good.

Is there any chance I can weld some wings off a 747 onto it and make it fly?

Answer: Given sufficient thrust or a big hydrogen balloon, then a train can fly. However it is not necessarily a good idea, and it may be dangerous to stand under its flight-path.

Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:21 pm

lewmur said:

Not in a way that would be useful. It would require an x86 emulator or a virtual session Host package like VM or VirtualBox. Either of those solutions would require more RAM than the Pi has

It should be possible to run winXP under qemu. If we assume 32MB for the GPU and 32MB for linux etc that should leave 192MB for qemu which is above the "reccomended" requirements for XP.

and the CPU would slow to a crawl.

It certainly won't run fast but it should run.

Another perhaps more promising option would be to use wine with qemu-user and binfmt-misc. I suspect this will run better than emulating a full OS but whether it will be usable will depend heavilly on the application.

Joe Schmoe · Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:24 pm

FWIW, my first pass at the "Can I run Windoze on it?" question (Yes, I admit it - way back when, that was my first thought about how I might use a Pi...) was running something like Win31 under DOSBox. And, now I see that that has been done (by Abishur). Hooray for that! (of course, it is more proof of concept, but still, nice job!)

But then the question arises: Why DosBox? Why not QEMU? Why did both I and Abishur gravitate to DosBox? Interesting question, that...

Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:36 pm

Yes, you could run an emulator on the Raspi to run x86 code. It already works - see Dosbox. No need to write another emulator.

However, with the figures above of about 20% of native, and given that the Raspi is about the equivalent of a 300MHz Pentium 2, it woudl be approximately the speed of a 66Mhz Pentium. That's about the year 1993.

Not sure the effort would be worth it to emulate a nearly 20 year old machine.

nick.mccloud · Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:48 pm

JamesH said:

Not sure the effort would be worth it to emulate a nearly 20 year old machine.

But surely, being a BBC Master remake, the RPi is emulating a 20 year old machine. Love the irony!

Joe Schmoe · Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:03 pm

@JamesH: I don't think anybody is talking about writing a new emulator. DosBox is there and working. QEMU is there. I'm sure that, at most, it will require a re-compile to get QEMU up and running and emulating Windows on the Pi.

Now, regarding the original question. I think that it is clear by now that the OP/newbie answer to the question is "No." (full stop). As I've said many times, "Sometimes, the answer is 'No.'".

But, for us hackers, it doesn't have to stop there. As hackers, we're willing to wait hours for the prompt to come up, and days (if necessary) for the GUI to come up. So, for us, the answer can be "Yes.". In fact, given enough time and patience, we should be able to run any version of Windoze on the Pi.

shirro · Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:15 pm

Joe Schmoe said:

In fact, given enough time and patience, we should be able to run any version of Windoze on the Pi.

Well, no, because we will die before Windows 7 would boot up. Since we would need to swap off disk to supply memory needs there is a possibility civilisation will have crumbled and been replaced by apes before a login prompt appears and we would be racing the exhaustion of the Sun's fuel to get to a desktop. If aliens should find our experiment and wonder what Adobe Photoshop does the race would be on to find out before all the stars start to go out. That is assuming a $35 computer made in China can last that long.

abishur · Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:21 pm

Joe Schmoe said:

In fact, given enough time and patience, we should be able to run any version of Windoze on the Pi.

I know for a fact that via dosbox no version of windows beyond 3.1 will be able to work no matter how much patience you have. You might be able to get past that barrier with qemu... but I wouldn't hold my breath

Joe Schmoe · Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:22 pm

Re #22: LOL!!!

Very nice.

Joe Schmoe · Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:25 pm

Re #24: I don't see any reason why QEMU wouldn't work. I assume you mean the "holding my breath" comment in the sense that it is bad for your oxygen supply to hold your breath for more than a few minutes...

I take your point about DosBox, though. BTW, why did you go with DosBox instead of QEMU for your experiments?

There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

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Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

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Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question:

Re: There's been so many discussions of so many different methods, it's hard to keep track. So, one big question: