DOSEMU

It uses a combination of hardware-assisted virtualization features and high-level emulation. It can thus achieve nearly native speed for 8086-compatible DOS operating systems and applications on x86 compatible processors, and for DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) applications on x86 compatible processors as well as on x86-64 processors. DOSEMU includes an 8086 processor emulator for use with real-mode applications in x86-64 long mode.

DOSEMU is only available for x86 and x86-64 Linux systems (Linux 3.15 x86-64 systems cannot enter DPMI by default. This is fixed in 3.16).

DOSEMU is an option for people who need or want to continue to use legacy DOS software; in some cases virtualisation is good enough to drive external hardware such as device programmers connected to the parallel port. According to its manual, "dosemu" is a user-level program which uses certain special features of the Linux kernel and the 80386 processor to run DOS in a DOS box. The DOS box, relying on a combination of hardware and software, has these abilities:

• Virtualize all input-output and processor control instructions
• Supports the word size and addressing modes of the iAPX86 processor family's "real mode", while still running within the full protected mode environment
• Trap all DOS and BIOS system calls and emulate such calls as needed for proper operation and good performance
• Simulate a hardware environment over which DOS programs are accustomed to having control.
• Provide DOS services through native Linux services; for example, dosemu can provide a virtual hard disk drive which is actually a Linux directory hierarchy.
• API-level support for Packet driver, IPX, Berkeley sockets (dosnet).