DOS Games Discussion

[wardrich]

Notes:
This was tested with Ubuntu 8.04LTS (Hardy Heron)
I've basically shamelessly ripped off Dosraider's guide, but changed a few words and instructions here and there.


If you're reading this it means you have discovered a simple fact:
You can't run dosgames in Linux.
Luckily there is help: Dosbox.
Dosbox will emulate a dos environment, so that the dosgames can run through it. It will handle all those dos instructions that Linux lacks.
--> It is a safe to use program, it will NOT harm your linux partition.

This is meant as a short intruction to help you on the way with that program, so that you can play most of those ol'gems in linux. It's not meant as an elaborate nor complete howto. If you need more explainations please use the Get Games To Work forum.

Before posting for help:
-> Read the dosbox readme. (/usr/share/doc/dosbox/README.gz)
-> Use the forum search, plenty games have already a topic with the needed solutions.


If you still need help:
-> Give your system specs (OS-HARDWARE).
-> State as clearely as possible your problem.
-> If you get an error message post it as correctly as you can.
-> Post what you did up to now to get your game running.
-> Post your mount lines, command lines you use to get the game running, the setup choices you made .....
-> Please don't forget to post about WHAT game you need help for.
-> Full original game? Downloaded? ISO? Ripped one? Downloaded from one of our sites?


First steps:
-> Download the latest dosbox version from your repository:
$ sudo apt-get install dosbox
-> You should create a directory in your home for your games: $ mkdir ~/games
-> You need to make a file in ~ to store your configuration settings:
$ touch ~/.dosboxrc
-> The repository didn't add it in automatically, so I had to build it from the bottom up (not that it's a lot of work)...

Here's mine:

[dosraider]

One question: Why not mount a C instead of a X ?

[wardrich]

Force of habit. When I'm in windows, I always used X instead of C namely because I used to have 2 optical drives, 2 external drives, and a crap ton of other things in that computer, so the easiest letter to guess that wouldn't be put to use any time soon was x. lol

The only issue I've got with the dosbox in linux is that it only looks in the pwd for dosbox.conf, that means that if you're in say, /home/dosraider/pictures when you put in the dosbox command, and your dosbox.conf is in /home/dosraider, it won't load it up.

I tried moving the .conf file into /usr/bin/ (which is where the executable is) and that didn't do the trick.


[edit: 3:07am]
got it figured out. Linux uses ~/.dosboxrc for a permanent always-working dosbox.conf. the .conf file is more of a temporary thing I guess for more-specific files... or something. It seems a tad bit useless.

[dosraider]

[wardrich]

True, it doesn't really matter much in Linux, since drives aren't letter-assigned.

[2LT Worm]

But really, if you need extra help with this, and you're using Linux, you might want to consider switching back to Windows.

[wardrich]