Want to play old DOS games easily on whatever Linux machine you're using? RetroArch now has a new fork named DOSBox Pure and you can give it a test now.
There's various launchers out there and guides for running DOSBox but the simplicity offered by RetroArch for retro stuff is great. Having that same ease of use available for DOSBox sounds pretty fantastic to me. DOSBox Pure has a lot of nifty features too like loading from zip files, mounting from inside zip files, save states and rewinding, controller mapping, cheats support and quite a lot more. It's a nicely advanced fork of the original.
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Want to give it a go yourself? You can now, as the Libretro team announced that it's ready for public testing along with a version for desktops and also Raspberry Pi (Arm7) so you could do a little DOSBox gaming easily on your fancy RPi setup - something I will admit I need to now try out.
Installing the test build is a simple case of downloading the correct release build, and then extracting the two files into your cores folder. You can usually find that on Linux somewhere like "/.config/retroarch/cores/". After that it's available to load into RetroArch directly and you can test away.
DOSBox Pure itself can be found on GitHub.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments
So is this a fork of the original dosbox code, or based on the 'staging' version that was recently advertised here?According to the GitHub, they simply mention the original DOSBox.
0 Likes
Nice! I've just tried it with few games. It works great, has controller support, quick saves, etc. It allows to select an .exe in a .zip archive in case of there are several executables. Though there is an inconvenience that functional keys (e.g. F2 and F4 for saving/loading) may be used by games.
It's available in AUR as libretro-dosbox-pure-git.
!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
Last edited by ageres on 22 December 2020 at 1:14 pm UTC
It's available in AUR as libretro-dosbox-pure-git.
!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
Last edited by ageres on 22 December 2020 at 1:14 pm UTC
0 Likes
save states and rewindingOh god yes! I might finally be able to play through the original GTA!
0 Likes
EagleDelta Dec 22, 2020
Anyone running into issues with:
Granted I'm on Pop!_OS and not Arch, and am running the Snap version since the Flatpak one has some issues.
Do I need to build retroarch from scratch?
[INFO] [CORE]: Loading dynamic libretro core from: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
[ERROR] Failed to open libretro core: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
Error(s): /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29' not found (required by /home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarc[INFO] [Environ]: SET_PIXEL_FORMAT: RGB565.Granted I'm on Pop!_OS and not Arch, and am running the Snap version since the Flatpak one has some issues.
Do I need to build retroarch from scratch?
0 Likes
That's kind of a pity.So is this a fork of the original dosbox code, or based on the 'staging' version that was recently advertised here?According to the GitHub, they simply mention the original DOSBox.
1 Likes, Who?
Anyone running into issues with:
[INFO] [CORE]: Loading dynamic libretro core from: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
[ERROR] Failed to open libretro core: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
Error(s): /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29' not found (required by /home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarc[INFO] [Environ]: SET_PIXEL_FORMAT: RGB565.
Granted I'm on Pop!_OS and not Arch, and am running the Snap version since the Flatpak one has some issues.
Do I need to build retroarch from scratch?
I guess the easiest question is do you have glibc installed at the correct version? It looks like it's asking for 2.29. From a quick Google, it looks like glibc provides libm and is running 2.32 most recently.
I'm not near my computer, but hopefully the newest version will satisfy that dependency.
Small edit: looking at the online Ubuntu repo, looks like the package is libc6. I think pop_os is based on Ubuntu, so I'd check for that package and update.
Last edited by denyasis on 23 December 2020 at 1:37 am UTC
0 Likes
EagleDelta Dec 23, 2020
Anyone running into issues with:
[INFO] [CORE]: Loading dynamic libretro core from: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
[ERROR] Failed to open libretro core: "/home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarch/cores/dosbox_pure_libretro.so"
Error(s): /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29' not found (required by /home/dhollinger/snap/retroarch/423/.config/retroarc[INFO] [Environ]: SET_PIXEL_FORMAT: RGB565.
Granted I'm on Pop!_OS and not Arch, and am running the Snap version since the Flatpak one has some issues.
Do I need to build retroarch from scratch?
I guess the easiest question is do you have glibc installed at the correct version? It looks like it's asking for 2.29. From a quick Google, it looks like glibc provides libm and is running 2.32 most recently.
I'm not near my computer, but hopefully the newest version will satisfy that dependency.
Small edit: looking at the online Ubuntu repo, looks like the package is libc6. I think pop_os is based on Ubuntu, so I'd check for that package and update.
I was able to get it working. I had to install from PPA instead of Flatpak or Snap
0 Likes
midi support with sound fonts
shut up and take my money!
i mean, hell to this day i dont know how to configure wine for that.
(i'm not talking about dos games)
come to me soundblaster!
Last edited by elmapul on 23 December 2020 at 9:19 am UTC
shut up and take my money!
i mean, hell to this day i dont know how to configure wine for that.
(i'm not talking about dos games)
come to me soundblaster!
Last edited by elmapul on 23 December 2020 at 9:19 am UTC
0 Likes
Nice! I've just tried it with few games. It works great, has controller support, quick saves, etc. It allows to select an .exe in a .zip archive in case of there are several executables. Though there is an inconvenience that functional keys (e.g. F2 and F4 for saving/loading) may be used by games.
It's available in AUR as libretro-dosbox-pure-git.
!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
acording to the video, you can remap the keys...
0 Likes
slaapliedje Dec 24, 2020
Nice! I've just tried it with few games. It works great, has controller support, quick saves, etc. It allows to select an .exe in a .zip archive in case of there are several executables. Though there is an inconvenience that functional keys (e.g. F2 and F4 for saving/loading) may be used by games.Whoa, what game is that? (and who wrote on a 12mhz 286 in 1992?)
It's available in AUR as libretro-dosbox-pure-git.
!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Dec 24, 2020
Nice! I will have to try it on my Atari PC4 (it is a 286@12)Whoa, what game is that?Prehistorik 2.
0 Likes
!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
Skyrim.
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Since it's been released on almost everything, it's not totally unbelievable that Bethesda would eventually release Skyrim for DOS. But still not Linux.!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
Skyrim.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Dec 27, 2020
Haha, sad but true. Maybe we can get it ported to the Atari VCS. It technically runs Linux... but then most non-MS consoles run a form of BSD and yet Skyrim doesn't run on all BSDs...Since it's been released on almost everything, it's not totally unbelievable that Bethesda would eventually release Skyrim for DOS. But still not Linux.!https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1w1fYE-iRb2iv-7St5gYLw00i6y3N3H36
Guess what game this is.
Skyrim.
0 Likes
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