Both the game and DOSBox configs are exactly the same? Is this on the same computer?

99% of the config options are the same.

Here are the differences:

WinXP uses:
output=overlay
priority=highest,normal

Linux uses:
output=surface
priority=higher,normal

These are the settings i've changed for both OS's from their default values and they are common to both:

fullscreen=true
memsize=64
aspect=true
scaler=advmame2x
gus=false
disney=false

PS:
why is sampling rate at 22khz? most games use 44khz audio right?

PS2:
yes, i'm talking about the same computer (AthlonXP 2100+, 512meg ram, GeForce 5200 AGP 8x).

opps, not sure why that came out us "guest", anyway, its me 😀

priority under linux only works if you are root. or made dosbox setuid root.

do you happen to run 24 bbp under linux ? and are you perhaps using something like arts ?

I'm using 24bbp under linux, running ALSA. I've tried with highest priority and its working fine 😀

I think 24bpp may be slower than 16- or 32bpp in DOSBox (which is probably why Qbix asked)

Also, 22KHz is default for sound probably because it uses less CPU power to emulate. Most games back then only used 22KHz at the very most, but remember that in DOSBox you're also mixing emulated PC Speaker and Adlib/OPL sound into that...

so, just for reference, how fast CPU do we need in order to do just about everything under dosbox (44khz audio, mixing, vga graphics, etc)?

Depends on the complexity of the game really. 2-3GHz and a video card less than 2 years old should let you play most games that were originally made with an ISA video card in mind.