12.2.1. DOS Emulators: Dosemu and xdos

We don't encourage you to use Dosemu unless you are willing and able to contribute to the further development of the package and have Internet access to work with the development team. However, Dosemu appears to be useful enough and stable enough to justify discussing it as a package you should consider installing. You should be aware, though, that the development of documentation for Dosemu lags behind the development of software. If you aren't involved in Dosemu development, you may find it difficult to use new features; they may not be that safe anyhow.

More recent versions of Dosemu include some functions originally developed as part of Carnegie Mellon University's DOS emulator for Mach, so Dosemu distributions include the nonrestrictive CMU copyright notice. This notice asks that developers who build software using CMU's work provide a copy of their work to CMU and allow CMU the right to use and redistribute it. (The copyright notice requires that their notice be reproduced and included in any distribution that uses their software, whether or not their code is modified.) You should honor CMU's copyright, so if you will participate in developing Dosemu, be sure to read and observe its copyright notice.

The Dosemu package includes scripts and utilities to install and maintain the package. Dosemu is updated weekly, and each distribution includes a list of software known to run (or not to run) with the current release of the package.

12.2.2. Getting Dosemu and xdos

Dosemu does not itself support compressed filesystems, but you can use a special driver in the Linux kernel that can mount compressed filesystems and then access those mounted filesystems from within Dosemu.

12.2.3. Installing and Configuring Dosemu

You must have gcc Version 2.7.2 and libc Version 5.4.7 or later for this version of Dosemu. Later versions of Dosemu may require later versions of Linux, gcc, and C libraries.

Boot Linux and login as root. Place the Dosemu package in the / root directory and unpack it. (The Dosemu package name may vary from this example, whose name reflects our downloading the file via DOS before copying it into the Linux filesystem):

# gunzip dosemu-0.98.4.tgz 
# tar -xvf dosemu-0.98.4.tar

If you need to rebuild your kernel to add IPC and DOS filesystem support and to install a kernel patch, do it now.

Still as root, go to the dosemu-0.98.4 directory and verify that the distribution Makefile exists there. Enter the commands:

# make
# make install

You can now try your newly installed Dosemu with a tiny provided FreeDOS image by issuing:

# ./first-test
C:> exitemu

If this works for you, your Dosemu is probably built correctly.

Next, you will have to copy and edit some configuration files:

tigger: # ./setup-hdimage
checking your partitions, wait...
...done
I've seen the following DOS partitions (perhaps non-bootable):

     /dev/sdc1

If none of them are valid, you can continue any way using a bootable
floppy as input. Which one do you want to use as input?
Type in the full device name or ENTER to cancel

/dev/fd0

A normal MSDOS system has command.com as shell.
If you have a different one, please enter the name,
else just type ENTER



We now try to generate a bootable hdimage into /var/lib/dosemu/
hdimage.first and are calling ./dexe/mkdexe for this.

You will be prompted to edit the configuration files
(config.sys, autoexec.bat e.t.c).

Enter the name of your favorite editor, if you type just ENTER, the
editor given via the EDITOR environment variable will be used.


Starting ...
System type is IBMorOpenDos. sysfiles: ibmbio.com, ibmdos.com, command.com
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
Cannot create entry named . or ..

Skipping "config.sys", is not a directory

Skipping "autoexec.bat", is not a directory
 ... done

In this case, we use a bootable OpenDOS floppy disk. If everything goes well, the file /var/lib/dosemu/hdimage.first should be generated and contain your DOS boot image. If there are problems, you might need to use the old method of creating a boot image; see the file doc/README-tech.txt, section 7, in the Dosemu distribution.

Next, check that there is a line like:

$_hdimage = "hdimage.first"

in your /etc/dosemu.conf. There can be more than one image file present here, but hdimage.first should be the first one mentioned.

Now you are ready to start your Dosemu with:

dosemu -C

Dosemu should come up with something like:

Linux DOS emulator 0.98.4.0 $Date: 2001/06/18 18:18:10 $
Last configured at Mon Mar 22 13:05:19 CET 1999 on linux
This is work in progress.
Please test against a recent version before reporting bugs and problems.
Bugs, Patches & New Code to linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu


Starting DOS...

[Host File System] drive D: is directory /
[dosemu EMS 4.0 driver installed]

Caldera OpenDOS 7.01
Copyright (c) 1976, 1997 Caldera, Inc.
All rights reserved.

"Welcome to dosemu 0.98!"
C:\>

Now you are ready to try your DOS emulator. Be sure to read the documentation to see the many possibilities of configuring Dosemu. By editing /etc/dosemu.conf, you can quickly solve problems that occur with specific DOS software, terminal modes, sound system support, and the like. You can add pointers to additional DOS directories on hard disks. When you are done working with Dosemu, you can exit it with:

C:\> exitemu

If you want to start Dosemu in an X window of its own, you can run the program xdos instead. You might need to execute:

xset fp rehash

first to make the newly installed DOS fonts available.

If you are adventurous, you can now even try to run Windows 3.x in real mode by installing it into your DOS hard-disk image and then typing:

win /r

12.2.4. Windows Emulation: Wine

Wine consists primarily of a program loader that loads and executes 16-bit MS Windows application binaries and an emulation library that translates calls to MS Windows functions and translates them into Linux and X Window System function calls. As the Wine FAQ notes, Wine means either "WINdows Emulator, or Wine Is Not an Emulator. Both are right." When Wine is fully developed, most Windows applications will run under Wine in the Linux/X environment and will run about as fast under Wine as they do under windows. Maybe faster. A Linux-supported graphics coprocessor makes the X Window System perform a lot better and therefore makes a big difference to Wine performance.

At the time of this writing, Wine support for the Win32 ABI (used by 32-bit Windows 95 and NT applications) is progressing. Ultimately, Wine developers hope that it will be able to run both 16- and 32-bit Windows applications.

Wine is filesystem independent and can be used on any Linux (or Unix) filesystem. You must use the X Window System to run Wine; Wine is invoked from a window opened by your favorite Linux window manager:

wine /pathname/winapp.exe

We can't encourage you to use Wine at this time unless you are a programmer who will contribute to the further development of this ambitious package. Wine is very much in alpha-stage development. As of this writing, Wine does not implement all of the MS-Windows application programming interface (API) functions. Because we think you won't be able to use Wine effectively at this stage unless you are a programmer with Internet access who can contribute to the project, we don't discuss how to install and configure Wine.