DOSBox-X is a fork of DOSBox that expands its PC hardware emulation (from the original IBM PC to progressively improving those of Windows 9x era) and all the options needed to tweak and configure the DOS virtual machine.

There are many alternatives to DOSBox for Linux if you are looking for a replacement. The best Linux alternative is DOSBox-X, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 10 alternatives to DOSBox and eight of them are available for Linux so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Linux alternatives to DOSBox are DOSBox Staging, DOSBox Pure, DOSBox SVN Daum and 86Box.
DOSBox-X is a fork of DOSBox that expands its PC hardware emulation (from the original IBM PC to progressively improving those of Windows 9x era) and all the options needed to tweak and configure the DOS virtual machine.

DOSBox Staging is a modern continuation of DOSBox with advanced features and current development practices.

DOSBox Pure is a fork of DOSBox, an emulator for DOS games, built for RetroArch/Libretro aiming for simplicity and ease of use.



An enhanced SVN build of the DOS emulator which incorporates unofficial features and fixes that are not officially part of DOSBox.



Feature rich with very good support to run Windows 98 (requires a bit of work to make this happen, but does it fairly well once it's configured) and performs considerably better than the original release!


86Box is a hypervisor and IBM PC system emulator that specializes in running old operating systems and software designed for IBM PC systems and compatibles from 1981 through fairly recent system designs based on the PCI bus.




DOSEMU stands for DOS Emulation, and allows you to run DOS and many DOS programs, including many DPMI applications such as DOOM and Windows 3.1, under Linux.


DOSBox is optimized for running games well across a wide range of platforms while DOSEMU is optimized for running more standard DOS code on Linux with greater platform integration.


This is an x86 emulator written in pure Java based on the Dosbox project. It currently supports running Dosbox's built in DOS and well as booting into Windows 95/98/NT4.


rpix86 is a PC emulator for the Raspberry Pi computer. Its purpose is to allow you to run old DOS games on your RPi. It is based on the DSx86 PC emulator for Nintendo DS game console.

It's based on DOSBox sources, but it's updated much more frequently.