Bochs User Manual
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# Chapter 3. Installation

# Downloading Bochs

You can download Bochs from our web site at bochs.sourceforge.net. First, you need to choose what version to get: a recent release or a development version. If you trying to get things working for the first time, a release version is recommended since it has been tested the most. The development versions (sometimes called snapshots) may have some newer bug fixes and new features, but have not been tested as much as the releases.

Second, you can choose to compile Bochs from source code or install a binary (if one is available for your platform). Binary packages will be quicker to install, and most include a small demo of a guest operating system called DLX Linux to get you started. However, some features can only be enabled if you compile Bochs yourself, for example the Bochs debugger. For multiuser systems, you will probably need system administrator privileges (root) to install a binary package. If you decide to get a binary, download it to your hard disk, uncompress it, then go to the section called Installing a Binary for more information.

If you are going to compile Bochs yourself, you need the gzipped tarball containing the source code, called `bochs-`version`.tar.gz`. For Windows and Mac, the prebuilt Makefiles are separate, so also get the Makefiles for your platform. To unpack a compressed TAR file[1] on a Unix machine[2] , type

      gunzip -c bochs-version.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

This creates a directory called `bochs-`version`` full of files. This directory will be referred to as `$BOCHS`. Go into `$BOCHS` and you are ready to compile. Instructions for compiling Bochs are in the section, Compiling Bochs.

Alternatively, you can also obtain the sources for any Bochs version using CVS. See the CVS instructions for details.

### Notes

[1] | A TAR file is a single file that contains many files packed inside. Bochs TAR files are compressed with a program called gzip, and another program called gunzip is used to uncompress them.
[2] | On Windows, look for software called WinZip to unpack the TAR.

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Release Notes |  | Tracking the source code with CVS