On Tue, 25 Oct 2022 at 23:55, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > DOSEmu / DOSEmu2 > > Is this available in any repos? I'm very naive. Didn't the original > used to be in "multiverse"? I'm not sure it's there anymore.
DOSemu used to be in Debian and Ubuntu, but it's been dropped now. DOSemu 1 used V86 mode, a feature on x86-32. It ran fine on 64-bit machines but I *think* only in 32-bit mode, because V86 mode has been removed from x86-64. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode I have successfully run DOSemu 1 on ChromeOS, though, in its Debian container. It worked and I was able to install MS Word 5.5 but it was very unstable and crashed when I tried to save a file. DOSemu2 works well and is already more stable. I have it on Ubuntu on several machines, but I don't use it heavily. Ubuntu is 64-bit only now and has been for some years. I have not tested DOSemu2 on 32-bit and I am not sure if it will even install. I don't have any 32-bit machines still in live use, although there are a couple of very old laptops that I occasionally play with. 64-bit PC kit has been around for very nearly 20 years now (AMG Sledgehammer was launched in 2003) and 32-bit only machines are getting very old. > I still haven't tried DOSEMU2 yet, but it uses its own modified FDPP > (DOS) kernel, right? Yes it does, but in theory it can run other DOSes as well. The documentation is currently very sketchy and I've not managed to get its scripts to install other DOSes to work. The script for FreeDOS only supports up to 1.2 last time I looked, and the script is broken and won't install. A friend of mine reported success though. > It has a PPA or whatever, not sure. Yes it does. I am using it successfully on Ubuntu 22.04. I recommend it; it works well, it's fast, and it seems more stable than v1 was towards the end. Host integration is good but needs more manual setup than in v1. > (This does > supposedly support VT-X now. So I understand from attending a talk by one of the developers at FOSDEM. > They used to support other methods, but > I'm not sure if that's still supported. Don't know. However Intel VT is also some 15Y old now and is ubiquitous. > Also, they might be 64-bit > host only, not sure. A good question. I can't readily tell. There are no 32-bit binaries available, I just checked. > So Hyper-V does actually support DOS? From what I read (years ago), I > wasn't sure. (Back then it was 64-bit Pro VT-X only.) Define "support". It should be able to _boot_ DOS but there will be little to no host integration, just as there isn't on VirtualBox. I haven't tried (I don't run Windows routinely on anything) but I'm pretty confident that the old Connectix DOS guest additions (which were very good) won't work, although Hyper-V descends from Connectix VirtualPC. > This is also > what WSL2 supposedly uses behind the scenes. Correct. > > KVM > > This is just QEMU using VT-X, right? Approximately right. KVM can use both Intel VT-X and AMD-V. It uses QEMU tools and formats to set up virtual disks and things but it's not running QEMU. I usually use VMM or GNOME Boxes to control it. I do not like either very much. > > Parallels > > Mac? Yes. > > vDOS > > Wengier did some work on VDOSPlus, I thought (for apps, not games, > with LFNs and better printing support). I have tried both vDOS and vDOS Plus. I wrote it up here: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_running_dos/ > > BHyve > > This was created for FreeBSD and first released in 10.0, IIRC. It > requires a 2010 Intel (or newer) with VT-X (and EPT). And AMD-V I believe. I am exploring FreeBSD more and more but I've not tried this yet. > IIRC, they > "mostly" wanted to run other versions of BSD, but there was partial > effort to get other OSes (even with a BIOS) running. Yes. Now Linux guests are supported too and FreeBSD runs on Firecracker, a formerly-Linux-only VM. https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/19/freebsd_comes_to_amazons_lightweight/ > Honestly, I never > tried it, but it sounded interesting. (Wasn't the Mac port called > xhyve?) I think so. MacOS now has its own built-in hypervisor though. Impressively, the ARM versions can do Rosetta2 x86-64→ARM64 translation *inside Linux guests*. > Apparently it can also run x64 Windows via UEFI. (sysutils/grub2-bhyve > is used for running some other *nixes.) Yup. It is quite mature now. It's supporter on TrueNAS and can run Windows VMs inside a NAS OS! > DOSEMU used to allow MS- or DR- or FD-, but I had weakly thought > DOSEMU2 required its own FreeDOS fork called FDPP. *Required*, no. Bundled, yes. Others are supported. > Yes, I agree that VMs are more common for FreeDOS users nowadays, > especially with no more BIOS or CSM on new machines. There are some Linux distros out there that aim mainly at running DOS VMs. As a FOSS OS that can't run natively on modern PCs and needs to run on top of another OS, ISTM that it is vital for FreeDOS to support running on top of another FOSS OS. Since modern hypervisors provide little to no support for DOS guests and will probably relatively soon drop support for BIOS guests and maybe even 32-bit guests, I would think that supporting DOS-specific virtualisation tools such as DOSemu2 was of paramount importance for FreeDOS, but I have asked about this on the list before and I got shouted down and told that these tools were obsolete and nobody used them any more. That makes me sad and I think it's a big mistake, probably a fatal one in the medium term, but I am only an occasional participant here at best. > I would say games are low priority (but still vaguely important) and > thus harder to get working. My main interest is in getting old utils > and compilers to run. Graphics (and especially sound) are a whole > other ball of wax. This is part of the issue. I am not interested in games either, but I am not interested in dev tools either. I'm interested in DOS productivity apps, and nothing much else. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
