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linux in dosbox

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First post, by evilfrog

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hi is it possible to boot linux whit dosbox ? thanks

Reply 1 of 15, by kruwi

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Seem impossible to me because Linux has always been a real 32 bit OS and dosbox is designed to boot 16 bit OSs. Windows 95 for example is a "16 bit dos system" which makes use of something like a permanent 32 bit extender (ok, this is really a layman's guess).

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Reply 3 of 15, by MiniMax

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<conspiracy mode="on">
Since Qbix explicit mentions 0.72 I suspect it will be possible in later versions 😀
</conspiracy>

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Reply 6 of 15, by general_vagueness

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It shouldn't be too hard to make a little stripped-down 16-bit Linux build in flat binary that *should* execute in DOSBox, but I don't know very much about Linux or machine/assembly language, so maybe I'm wrong. At any rate, such a thing could be incredibly useful. OK, DOSBox isn't designed for stuff like that, but you get the idea: you got Linux in my Windows! hey, this is delicious! now I can ls and cp and man and mv all day long and still get a BSOD when I'm done, or even before I'm done! 😵 😉

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Reply 9 of 15, by `Moe`

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Running anything except DOS (which includes old Windowses by definition) first fails because of non-emulated disk hardware.

By the time someone implements an IDE emulation that no game ever needs, you'd hit CPU inaccuracies (often delliberate ones, to improve game speed). And then you'd probably missing more hardware which isn't needed for game-only emulation. And if you were a master programmer who solved all these issues, you'd realize that using qemu/VirtualBox for the same task would have been much less painful and would work better.

The net result is what everyone is saying all the time: Don't run anything but games in it. If anything else works, it's pure luck (and unsupported). This specialization makes games a truly great experience in DOSBox, but many other things a pain.

Reply 13 of 15, by general_vagueness

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Actually, now that I think about it, it really should be possible if you make it so that you can exit from it and use the existing file system (and there are Linuxes [Linuces?] that use FAT-12, FAT-16, FAT-32, and possibly NTFS) and the interrupts emulated by DOSBox, and no other hardware dependencies. But yeah, it wouldn't be very useful. I'm going to check out this VirtualBox. Is it associated with DOSBox at all?

You cannot fall off the floor.
If you look hard enough, you'll find something you don't like.

How to ask questions the smart way
How to become a hacker
How to answer smart-alec questions