That's more than enough to install and run DOS. To create an image file that's about 200MB, type this: qemu-img create dos.img 200MĬompared to modern computing, 200MB may seem small, but in the early 1990s, 200MB was pretty big. To initialize a file that you can use as a virtual C: drive, use the qemu-img command. Under QEMU, virtual drives are image files. Other media, including other hard drives or CD-ROM drives, are assigned D:, E:, and so on. In DOS, drives are assigned with letters- A: and B: are the first and second floppy disk drives and C: is the first hard drive. You'll need a place to install FreeDOS inside QEMU, and for that you'll need a virtual C: drive. Here are four easy steps to run old DOS applications under Linux by using QEMU and FreeDOS. Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview.Most popular Linux systems include QEMU by default.
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QEMU (short for Quick EMUlator) is an open source software virtual machine system that can run DOS as a "guest" operating system Linux. These days, it's much easier to install DOS in a virtual machine running under Linux. In the "old days," you installed DOS as the sole operating system on a computer. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS. Instead, you can run them right inside Linux with the help of a PC emulator and FreeDOS.įreeDOS is a complete, free, DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems.
Or just because you are curious about "classic computing." You don't need to dual-boot your system to run DOS programs. There are many reasons to run an old DOS application today. Maybe to extract a report from a legacy business application. Just because an application is old doesn't mean it's no longer useful. The classic DOS operating system supported a lot of great applications: word processors, spreadsheets, games, and other programs.