DOSEMU

DOSEMU, alternatively rendered dosemu, is a compatibility layer software package that enables MS-DOS systems, DOS clones such as FreeDOS or DR-DOS, and DOS software to run under Linux on x86-based PCs (IBM PC compatible computers).

Features

It uses a combination of hardware virtualization features and high-level emulation. It is thus able to achieve nearly native speed for 8086-compatible DOS operating systems and applications on x86 compatible processors, and for DPMI applications on x86 compatible processors as well as on x86-64 processors. DOSEMU includes an 8086 processor emulator for use with real-mode applications in x86-64 long mode.

Currently it is only available for x86 and x86-64 Linux systems (Linux 3.15 x86-64 systems cannot enter DPMI by default. This is fixed in 3.16).

DOSEMU is an option for people who need or want to continue to use legacy DOS software, in some cases virtualisation is good enough to drive external hardware such as EPROM programmers connected to the parallel port. According to its manual, "dosemu" is a user-level program which uses certain special features of the Linux kernel and the 80386 processor to run MS-DOS, FreeDOS or DR-DOS in a DOS box. The DOS box, relying on a combination of hardware and software, has these capabilities: