TITLE: Setting up dosemu with freeDOS or any other dos LFS VERSION: any AUTHOR: Alex Kloss SYNOPSIS: Sometimes you want to use the good old Disk Operating System, e.g. for playing some real old games (like commander keen), but you don't want to shutdown your linux box and don't have a DOS bootdisk anyway... HINT: Get dosemu (and freeDOS) now! DOWNLOADS: http://www.dosemu.org dosemu-.tgz; dosemu-freedos-bin.tgz INSTALL: dosemu: First edit the compiletime-settings to match your preferences. The file compiletime-settings.help explains the usage of these options. I myself used the following options: --snip config { experimental on sbemu on mitshm on x on net on dodebug on slangforce on oldslang off runasroot off linkstatic off newint on aspi on } --snap ./rebuild all && cp bin/* && mkdir /var/lib/dosemu /var/lib/dosemu/dosemu && cp src/plugin/commands/*.com /var/lib/dosemu/dosemu now try "dos" or "xdos". If xdos complains about not finding the necessary fonts, you should edit your etc/X11/XftConfig and add to the first lines dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc" and restart X. A minor problem is that the src/plugin/commands dir does not contain all of the dosemu stuff, for example the cdrom.sys driver is missing. You'll find the turbo C sources in /src/commands. Since you propably don't have turbo C, you'll have to find a way to 1. extract that driver from the binary distribution or 2. compile it without turbo C: cd src/commands && for i in aspi cdrom ems emufs; do as86 -b ${i}.sys ${i}.S done && cp *.sys /var/lib/dosemu/dosemu Just don't mind the errors. The drivers should work anyway. freedos: mkdir /var/lib/dosemu && cd /var/lib/dosemu && tar xzfv //freedos-bin.tar.gz any other dos: mkdir /var/lib/dosemu /var/lib/dosemu/dos && cp //io.sys /var/lib/dosemu && cp //msdos.sys /var/lib/dosemu && cp //command.com /var/lib/dosemu You may be interested in copying other files you want (himem.sys) to the dos directory. CONFIGURE: Copy etc/dosemu.users.[easy|secure] and etc/dosemu.conf to /etc and edit them to match your preferences. TODO: Check for other DOS, e.g. Caldera Open Dos, which is also free. Hope this was helpful! Alex