Chapter 3: Emulators

Overview

Throughout this book, we cover tools for many different operating systems. To use the full gamut of tools, many professionals will build “dual-boot” or “multi-boot” workstations with multiple operating systems installed on them (usually a Windows flavor and a Linux/BSD variant). If they are in Windows and need to use a Unix tool, they simply reboot their system to use the Unix tool, and vice versa. This seems like a satisfactory solution, and even though many Linux distributions ease the pain of co-installing multiple operating systems, the process can still be tricky and cumbersome to switch between systems continually. Making several operating systems coexist and cooperate peacefully on the same platform can sometimes be difficult because of partitioning issues on your hard drive. Also, switching back and forth between operating systems can be a severe pain if you have to do it often.

An emulator ameliorates many situations because it provides the ability to execute an application in an alternative environment or even enables a user to run two or more operating systems concurrently.