شبيه ساز

هنگامي كه نياز باشد تا برنامه اي را تحت محيط پيراموني ويژه اي مورد بررسي و يا بازديد قرار دهيد به سيستمي نياز داريد تا اين محيط را براي شما پياده سازي كند. در مورد سيستم عامل ها تقريبا بهترين برنامه اي كه اين شبيه سازي را انجام مي دهد محصولات خانواده VMware است كه نسخه 5 آن نيز به تازگي منتشر شده است.
اگر دنبال برنامه هاي باز متن اين چنين باشيد مي توانيد از گزينه هاي زير انتخاب كنيد :

Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Currently, Bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro or AMD64 CPU, including optional MMX, SSE, SSE2 and 3DNow! instructions.

QEMU is a generic and open source processor emulator which achieves a good emulation speed by using dynamic translation. QEMU has two operating modes:

• Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system (for example a PC), including a processor and various peripherials. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.
  

• User mode emulation (Linux host only). In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU.