Dos Subsystem for Linux - Just published

English Open Chat
1

Here’s a new trick, just published within the past day…

For those who are DOS aficionados,
You know how difficult it can be to run DOS on today’s MSWindows because for various reasons systems are architecturally backwards compatible only one generation. This means that when MSWindows introduced Win95, it retained backwards compatibility to support running DOS and Win16 natively but when Windows moved to full 64-bit, it only today retains backwards compatibility to 32-bit and 16-bit was dropped.

Now,
By a combination of using WSL that now runs a real Linux kernel and the use of QEMU, an enterprising software developer has created DOS Subsystem for Linux that runs a real DOS 6.22 kernel (IIRC the last important version. Later DOS were not as important). No emulation. No translations. Real DOS with all its early limitations.

I haven’t tried to run this, but it seems like something significant to know.
And, of course if you’re not running MSWindows, it’s also a roadmap to running DOS on Linux.

One of many articles announcing
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dos-subsystem-for-linux-breaks-cover-553747

The github project
https://github.com/charliesome/doslinux

TSU

2

Well that sucks!

Wasn’t that long ago I threw out every bit of my old DOS software including many, many dollars worth of compilers, libraries, editors, tools and on and on.

Of course, the article didn’t state directions for installing IDE floppy disks in my machine either!

3

How does this differ from dosemu, which I thought essentially did this also…?

4

“dosemu” is a DOS emulator which runs on Linux …

According to the GitHub description, the “DOS Subsystem for Linux” is –

A WSL alternative for users who prefer an MS-DOS environment. DOS Subsystem for Linux integrates a real Linux environment into MS-DOS systems, allowing users to make use of both DOS and Linux applications from the DOS command prompt.

Which I’m taking to mean that, in a similar way to that which “Windows Subsystem for Linux” does, this thing allows MS-DOS users to execute Linux CLI commands …