AlfreX wrote on 2026-10-04, 20:16:

Linux soon? That's amazing!! I wanted this with all my heart, but I never thought it would happen so fast! I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

A fully polished version, probably not soon. I have an early alpha that sort of works for basic functionality - it can launch X/staging/pure/standard forks of DOSBox. Haven't looked at shaders yet. You are free to have a play around with it - just remember it's very, very early, mostly broken and unfinished. Requires QT5 to be installed.

I tried to get it to work on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma, but I couldn't. Would it be possible to package it as an AppImage? That way, it would already include the necessary libraries, and it would be easier to test on any distribution.
If it's too much trouble, don't worry—we'll test it when support is more advanced.
Anyway, thank you very much, and keep up the good work!

AlfreX wrote on 2026-10-05, 21:47:

I tried to get it to work on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma, but I couldn't. Would it be possible to package it as an AppImage? That way, it would already include the necessary libraries, and it would be easier to test on any distribution.
If it's too much trouble, don't worry—we'll test it when support is more advanced.
Anyway, thank you very much, and keep up the good work!

I will have to investigate appimage. I tested on lubuntu with kde. I will try arch as well. I would like the distro to work on any modern linux with kde/qt5 installed.

AlfreX wrote on 2026-10-05, 21:47:

I tried to get it to work on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma, but I couldn't. Would it be possible to package it as an AppImage? That way, it would already include the necessary libraries, and it would be easier to test on any distribution.
If it's too much trouble, don't worry—we'll test it when support is more advanced.
Anyway, thank you very much, and keep up the good work!

In the meantime, I was able to get it working on Arch after installing the following:

pacman -S qt5-base
pacman -S qt5pas

It did not perform as well as on Lubuntu, making me think something else isn't set up right, but you should be able to load it up and play around a bit. I will try and have a more workable version soon.

If you are getting some other error even after installing the above, paste it in here so I can investigate. Cheers.

First of all, thanks! I'm glad you're going to check out AppImage. I think that if you manage to do it, it'll be the easiest way for anyone to try it out, and you'll have a solid, consistent base of libraries so you can identify bugs more quickly.
As for installing the Qt5 dependencies, I think both I and others would rather not have a bunch of old dependencies installed—KDE has been using Qt6 for a long time now.
I’ll wait for your next, slightly more polished version and give it a try.
Thanks for your work, friend.

Little bit of research and a little bit of Grok and building an appimage package was not that hard. Tested on Lubuntu and Arch. It bundles QT5 but its internal to the package and should not require any more dependencies. If you get any missing deps let me know and I will add them in.

https://send.bitwarden.com/#Qf_7wtMjgUqn-rTcA … faOGNshqdsKN8Eg

Wow, that was fast!
I'm going to try it out and let you know what I think! Thanks so much!

I've tested the program; it launches, but it has some minor UI glitches, like choppy text. Nothing serious, though.
The problem was that it doesn't detect my Dosbox installation. It won't let me run any games, and it won't even open Dosbox Staging on its own.
There's no error screen or anything—you just click “Run,” and it does nothing.
I’m using Arch Linux, and DOSBox Staging is installed in /usr/bin/dosbox. In the DfendX settings, the path is set correctly, but it doesn’t load.
So that’s as far as my testing went.
I know the Linux port isn’t a priority yet, so I don’t want to get in the way. But when it’s further along, if you’d like, we can connect and do a live video session to see if we can fix things.
Best regards.

AlfreX wrote on Yesterday, 22:40:

I've tested the program; it launches, but it has some minor UI glitches, like choppy text. Nothing serious, though. The problem […]
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I've tested the program; it launches, but it has some minor UI glitches, like choppy text. Nothing serious, though.
The problem was that it doesn't detect my Dosbox installation. It won't let me run any games, and it won't even open Dosbox Staging on its own.
There's no error screen or anything—you just click “Run,” and it does nothing.
I’m using Arch Linux, and DOSBox Staging is installed in /usr/bin/dosbox. In the DfendX settings, the path is set correctly, but it doesn’t load.
So that’s as far as my testing went.
I know the Linux port isn’t a priority yet, so I don’t want to get in the way. But when it’s further along, if you’d like, we can connect and do a live video session to see if we can fix things.
Best regards.

Could you point it at the dosbox executable in the staging install directory instead of /usr/bin/? The reason is staging detection is a bit difficult, it needs to find a README next to the executable to actually identify it as staging. Could possible look at doing a stream after a bit more testing, it is still very early days.

The thing is, that's exactly the directory where it's installed (I verified this using the `which` command in the Linux console). Unlike in Windows, I don't have an executable file I can use.
Maybe there's a way, but I don't know it—I'm not an expert on Linux either.

How did you install it? I downloaded and unzipped this file:

dosbox-staging-linux-x86_64-v0.83.0.tar.xz

The current staging support needs all the files that comes in this file. However, I tested this and it worked perfectly on arch (see images attached).

OK, I had DOSBox Staging installed from chaotic-aur; maybe that's why it wasn't working for me. Now I downloaded it directly from the official website, just like you did.
Could you send me the link to download the DefendX AppImage again? Because I thought it was an early-development bug and deleted it. Thanks

AlfreX wrote on Today, 19:28:

OK, I had DOSBox Staging installed from chaotic-aur; maybe that's why it wasn't working for me. Now I downloaded it directly from the official website, just like you did.
Could you send me the link to download the DefendX AppImage again? Because I thought it was an early-development bug and deleted it. Thanks

You can try this one: https://send.bitwarden.com/#tqXCe1NmOEi_YLTdA … u6Xvyp6rBxcr-YQ