There are many Linux users who used Microsoft Windows when they were young. I’m one such GNU/Linux user.

I started using computers about 15 years back and I was using Windows 95 and 98 exclusively. And there are few vintage DOS games that I still would like to play. Dangerous Dave (or simply Dave) is one such game. One of the main issues in Linux system is that these games are still unavailable (even though Dave is a freeware -  but NOT a freesoftware– if I understand it correctly).

Even if you try using Wine HQ, these games mostly fail to work properly.

Here comes DOSBOX.

DOSBOX is available in the repository of most of the popular Linux distributions. Ubuntu users can install it by issuing :

sudo apt-get install dosbox

After installation, type ‘dosbox’ in terminal to run the application.

A new window will popup and gives you a command prompt.

First you need to mount the directory under which the DOS application that you want to run is located. This can be done by:

mount label directory

Replace label by your preferred label (in this demo I have used ‘c’) and directory by the path to the directory. See the picture shown below:

Then cd (change directory) to the application directory and run the application file (in my case it is dave/DAVE.EXE).

Now you can see that you application is running.

Have fun!

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