DOSEMU-0.98 ANNOUNCEMENT

The DOSEMU team is proud to announce DOSEMU 0.98.1, the PC Emulator for x86 based *nix. Please remember to consider this as ALPHA software.

WHAT IS DOSEMU?

DOSEMU is a PC Emulator application that allows Linux to run a DOS operating system in a virtual x86 machine. This allows you to run many DOS applications. These are the capabilities of DOSEMU that are worth noting:

Color text and full keyboard emulation (via hotkeys) even on terminal.
Built-in X-Windows support (includes IBM character set font)
Graphics capability at the console (most compatible video cards).
Graphics emulation in X for 256 color modes. (X-server may be in true color mode)
DPMI support
able to run (handicapped) Windows-3.1 either on console or in X. (you need the os2win31.zip package, and licenses for both, Windows-3.1 and OS/2. see doc/README.Windows)
Runs Borland BCC.EXE/TCC.EXE version 3.x command line compilers!
Runs Borland C++ 3.x IDE
Runs several 32-bit DPMI-compliant video games (including those based on DOS/4GW) at the Linux console.
CDROM support.
Sound support (including sound DMA)
NetWare and other network connectivity via builtin IPX and pktdrvr support.
runs on any Linux kernel >= 2.0.28 (last tested was 2.1.120)

WHAT IS NEW against version 0.66.7?

simpler and more user friendly configuration (a lot of former dosemu.conf stuff is auto-detected by the new configuration script global.conf, however, people with deeper knowledge of DOSEMU can fine tune this script to fit their special private needs). The new Tcl/Tk based configuration tool makes configuration quicker.
all security problems now can be solved via appropriate configuration and DOSEMU now can run non-suid-root (some features will be unavailable).
support for per user DOSEMU directories.
Improved graphics capability under X (including mouse support, LFB and VESA support, resizing, e.t.c).
Better handling of non-US keyboards, both in X and on terminal, loadable key-tables. More national key-tables.
more supported graphic cards under raw console mode.
more precise timer emulation (using the pentium cycle counter where available)
better sound support
more features for the builtin debugger (dosdebug).
major portions of the code have been rewritten and cleaned up.
glibc adaptation (though, we haven't checked today's changes yet;-).
... and finally, lots of bugs are fixed and more DOS-applications are running than ever before.

REQUIREMENTS

Linux >= 2.0.28 (with IPC support, IPX support optional)
mtools-3.8 (for creating hdimages and DEXEs)

When compiling dosemu yourself:

GCC 2.7.2+ and LIBC 5.4.7+ are recommended for best results.
Plenty of swap, since DOSEMU requires between 12 and 25 megabytes of total memory to compile, depending on configuration.

COPYRIGHT

DOSEMU is set under GPL version 2 (see file COPYING in the distribution).

The DOS processed (booted) by DOSEMU may have any other policy and is explicitly allowed to be proprietary.

CREDITS

This release could not have gotten out the door without the work of the our relentless development team and friends, currently consisting of at least:

  Jon Tombs            	Aaron			Karl Kiniger
  Daniel R. Barrlow	Christoph Niemann	Theodore T'so
  Derek Fawcus		Linus Torvalds		Alan Cox
  Alessandro Rubini	Corey Sweeney		James Maclean
  Hans Lermen		Andrew.Tridgell		Jochen Hein
  Jason E Gorden	Lam Lai Yin, Savio	Alistair MacDonald
  Lawrence K Mao	Ronnie			Mark Rejhon
  Michael E. Deisher	Larry Stephan		Lutz Molgedey
  Amit Margalt 		Marty Leisner 		Dong Liu
  Scott Buchholz 	Tim Van der Linden 	John Davis
  Kang-Jin Lee 		Matthew Grant 		David Hansen
  John Kohl 		Kevin P Lawton 		Rod May
  Wayne P Meissner 	Vinod G Kulkarni 	Andries
  David Etherton 	Alberto Vignani		Eric W. Biederman
  Erik Mouw		Arjan Filius		Uwe Bonnes
  Rainer Zimmermann	Steffen Winterfeld	David Brauman
  Rutger Nijlunsing	Reinhard Karcher	Michael Karcher
  Marcus Better		Arne de Bruijn		Kenneth Corbin
  Pasi Eronen		Robert de Bath

and others too important to mention.

WHERE TO GET IT

The DOSEMU PC Emulator can be downloaded from the following FTP sites:

The binary distribution is statically linked against libc-5.4.46 and libX* from XFree-3.3. It should run on all current Linux distributions.

HELPING US

Many thanks to all who have helped with this release, by sending bug reports, patches, comments and/or ideas for DOSEMU! Our apologies for not having answered every letter, and possibly missing some important information. If you know something you think we should know, contact us, PLEASE! We can be reached at:

"The DOSEMU team" <linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org>
http://www.dosemu.org/

The DOSEMU team