DOS Emulation Under Linux - a Simple Guide

David Precious writes "With just a little work, it's possible to get your Linux system to run DOS applications with very little trouble. Whether you need to run some legacy corporate application, or just want to play some of those old classic DOS games, it's easy to get going. To make it easy, I've produced a simple guide to explain it. Hopefully it'll be of use to some people."

Comments

And if DOSemu doesn't work for some reason . . .

[Selanit]

. . . you can also try DOSbox, which is a virtual DOS machine.

Or do it the easy way.

[Anonymous Coward]

In real Linux distributions, click K (or G) > Configuration > Packaging > Install software

Enter root password
search for dos.
Tick the dosbox box. Click install.

All the depencancies are automagically resolved and your done in 10 seconds.

Then click
K > Applications > Emulators > Dosbox

Then volia, the c prompt is here haunt you.

Silly geeks, why do you make your life so hard when it can be so easy now days.

Re:Or do it the easy way.

[upside]

Because we geeks know the commandline is quicker. In Mandrake:

urpmi dosbox

Re:And if DOSemu doesn't work for some reason . .

[Anonymous Coward]

DOSBox will also run on non-x86 machines. Got MacOSX or LinuxPPC? Works.

Re:Duke Nukem 3D

[slux]

I suggest you try Icculus' Duke Nukem 3D GNU/Linux port if you want to play it rather than fiddling with dosemu or dosbox (which will surely be too slow as it emulates the entire cpu).

The same goes for all the games mentioned in the guide - Quake, Wolf3D, Doom all have versions that can be run natively on GNU/Linux and some are also greatly enhanced. Schorched Earth's original version isn't but several remakes are. The Linux Game Tome is a good starting place if you wish to obtain these.

It's interesting how it might be easier to run legacy Dos apps in GNU/Linux than in Windows (XP) these days. My friend's been dreaming of running a certain old dos game on his WinXP system, but all he has is Dosbox which doesn't run it and even if it did, it would be unplayably slow.

DOSEMU / FreeDOS useful for embedded support

[barries]

There's still a dusty corner of systems design and programming that takes place on DOS: some embedded programming tools (compilers, flash burners, in circuit emulator debuggers) for some chips still work "best" on DOS.

Only now, we can use DOSEMU to run them under Linux and get the benefit of real development environment when supporting legacy apps. We can open a bash shell and use Perl, gnu make, emacs/vim, etc to drive development, then have a DOSemu / FreeDOS window to drive download and debug.

It can be quite difficult automating the Windows versions of these tools to that same level. Most of our projects use Windowes tool (running in VMware on Linux), but we did one two years ago hosted on DOSEMU and using Bytecraft's (now) excellent compiler for the PIC chips.

Best of both worlds, and many, many thanks to all the hackers that made it work so well.

- Barrie

Re:It's a bit ironic... - Try VDMsound

[Artega VH]

May I suggest vdmsound Allowed me to play Dune 2 no problems under windows 2k. Bonus points for it being open source and gpl'ed eh?

Re:Abandomware

[TwistedSquare]

IIRC, Apogee sell all their old games online on their website www.3drealms.com -quick check- Yep, if you go here: http://store.yahoo.com/3drealms/dowit.html you can find classics such as Duke Nukem (1&2), Commander Keen (various episodes), and lesser known games such as the "cute" Cosmo, Crystal Caves, etc. Those were the days!