The question of "Can you run Alpha Four under Linux?" has been asked before
and never answered AFAIK. The following edited exchange is from Dr. Jerry
Pournelle's (SF writer and long time BYTE columnist) website
www.jerrypournelle.com and seems to answer the question.
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Jerry: There must be a few that still use Dos programs and would like to use
one of the Linux distributions. Question: Can a Dos program, like Word
Perfect 5.1+, be run under Linux? VM Ware touts their program to allow
Windows programs to run under Linux -- why not Dos programs ? F0r sure, I
don't see anyone porting Dos to Linux so it will have to be, I guess, run
under Linux some other way.
I trust this isn't an imposition.
John Little
No imposition but you force a confession. I don't know, and my Linux boxes
are not running (or like the NetWinder are too critically important for
experiments) so it will be a while before I can find out for myself; but I
bet someone here will tell us in hours. And they did. See below.
Jerry Pournelle
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOS programs can be run under Linux.
If you buy VMWare, you can run Windows, and you can run DOS programs under
Windows. You could also make your VMWare virtual machine run DOS programs
directly.
However, there is a free DOS system for Linux. It is called "dosemu", but
despite the name it is more of a virtual machine for DOS.
http://www.dosemu.org/docs/HOWTO/
I am using Mandrake Linux 7.1 Deluxe, and when I installed it, I got the
dosemu system as well. I just fired it up for a test. It seems to run PC
Write and the DOS version of vim just fine. I haven't tried Word Perfect.
On my Mandrake computer, dosemu came set up with freedos, so I didn't even
need to scrounge a copy of DOS for it to run. But the dosemu documentation
says that DOS versions 2.0 through 7.0 are known to work.
http://www.freedos.org/
If your Linux system has dosemu installed, then if you type the command
"man dos" you should get a manual page for it. If not, you can install it
yourself.
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/emulators/dosemu/
Source code is in this file: dosemu-1.0.1.tgz
Here is the RPM: dosemu-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
If you want the source code version, there is a file called QuickStart
included that describes how to build and install it. --
Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" [email protected]
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
and never answered AFAIK. The following edited exchange is from Dr. Jerry
Pournelle's (SF writer and long time BYTE columnist) website
www.jerrypournelle.com and seems to answer the question.
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Jerry: There must be a few that still use Dos programs and would like to use
one of the Linux distributions. Question: Can a Dos program, like Word
Perfect 5.1+, be run under Linux? VM Ware touts their program to allow
Windows programs to run under Linux -- why not Dos programs ? F0r sure, I
don't see anyone porting Dos to Linux so it will have to be, I guess, run
under Linux some other way.
I trust this isn't an imposition.
John Little
No imposition but you force a confession. I don't know, and my Linux boxes
are not running (or like the NetWinder are too critically important for
experiments) so it will be a while before I can find out for myself; but I
bet someone here will tell us in hours. And they did. See below.
Jerry Pournelle
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOS programs can be run under Linux.
If you buy VMWare, you can run Windows, and you can run DOS programs under
Windows. You could also make your VMWare virtual machine run DOS programs
directly.
However, there is a free DOS system for Linux. It is called "dosemu", but
despite the name it is more of a virtual machine for DOS.
http://www.dosemu.org/docs/HOWTO/
I am using Mandrake Linux 7.1 Deluxe, and when I installed it, I got the
dosemu system as well. I just fired it up for a test. It seems to run PC
Write and the DOS version of vim just fine. I haven't tried Word Perfect.
On my Mandrake computer, dosemu came set up with freedos, so I didn't even
need to scrounge a copy of DOS for it to run. But the dosemu documentation
says that DOS versions 2.0 through 7.0 are known to work.
http://www.freedos.org/
If your Linux system has dosemu installed, then if you type the command
"man dos" you should get a manual page for it. If not, you can install it
yourself.
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/emulators/dosemu/
Source code is in this file: dosemu-1.0.1.tgz
Here is the RPM: dosemu-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
If you want the source code version, there is a file called QuickStart
included that describes how to build and install it. --
Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" [email protected]
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
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