Chances are that most of you reading along those lines have started your “adventure” in computers through DOS. Although this long deprecated operating system is only running in our memories anymore, it will always hold a special place in our hearts. That said, some of you may still want to drink a sip of nostalgia or show your kids what old days were like by running some MS-DOS applications on your Linux distribution. The good news is, you can do it without much effort!
For this tutorial, I will be using a DOS game I was playing when I was a little kid called “UFO Enemy Unknown”. This was the first ever squad turn-based strategy game released by Microprose a bit over twenty years ago. A remake of the game was realized by Firaxis in 2012, clearly highlighting the success of the original title.
Dos Programs On Xp
DOS programs will just run in Windows. Windows 64-bit But if you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows (and you probably are), you’ll need a program that can run DOS in a virtual machine. Opening DOS applications full-screen under Windows 7. Opening DOS applications full-screen under. Is there any way to install anything that will let me run some of my critical old dos. In January 2017, it was announced that Twain will have her own exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame titled Shania Twain: Rock This Country, which will open on June 26 and run through 2018. In 2018, Twain was announced as the second recipient of the CCMA Generation Award. Dos programs in wine. Ask Question 4. No, it's not a bug, you can't run the DOS programs in Ubuntu using Wine because it only supports Windows or DOS. Share| improve this answer. Edited Apr 24 '12 at 14:54. User unknown. 4,871 2 21 51. Answered Apr 24 '12 at 13:20. 'Here's the general rule: If the DOS program ran in XP, it will probably run in a 32-bit version of Windows 7. But no DOS program can ever run in a 64-bit version of Windows 7.' Ref: Can old DOS programs run in Windows 7? Carey Frisch. Tuesday, April 22, 2014 4:18 PM. Will Vista run DOS programs as transparantly and as well as Win98? Click to expand. The last time I remember that Wordperfect 5.x was still in active use was about 10 or 12 years ago. Several years ago I wrote some x86 DOS assembly programs as aid for Batch file programming. The programs are very small; about two or three hundred bytes in.COM version. I am now updating and creating new versions of those programs; however, the.COM or.EXE executable files don't run in 64-bits Windows versions.
Wine
Since DOS executables are .exe files, it would be natural to think that you could run them with wine, but unfortunately you can't. The reason is stated as “DOS memory range unavailability”.
What this means is that the Linux kernel forbids any programs (including wine) from executing 16-bit applications and thus accessing the first 64k of kernel memory. It's a security feature and it won't change, so the terminal prompt to use DOSBox can be the first alternative option.
DOSBox
Install DOSBox from your Software Center and then open your file manager and make sure that you create a folder named “dosprogs” located in your home directory. Copy the game files inside this folder and then open dosbox by typing “dosbox” in a terminal. Now what we need to do is to mount the “dosprogs” folder into dosbox. To do this type mount c ~/dosprogs and press enter on the DOSBox console. Then type c: to enter the newly mounted disk as shown in the following screenshot.
Run Dos Programs In Windows 7
You may then navigate the disk folders by using the “cd” command combined with the “dir” until you locate the game executable. For example, type “cd GAME” to enter the GAME folder and then type “dir” and press enter to see what the folder GAME contains. If the file list is too long to see in a screen, you may also give the “dir /w/p” command a try. In my case, the executable is UFO.bat and so I can run it by typing its name (with the extension) and pressing enter.
DOSemu
Another application that allows you to run DOS executables under Linux is DOS Emulator (also available in the Software Center). It is more straight forward in regards to the mounted partitions as you simply type “D:” and enter on the console interface to access your home directory. From there you can navigate to the folder that contains the DOS executable and run it in the same way we did in DOSBox. The thing is though that while DOSemu is simpler to use, it may not run flawlessly as I found through my testing. You can always give it a try though and see how it goes.