dosemu2 is an emulator for running DOS programs under linux. It can also serve as a VM to boot various DOSes.

Binary packages for ubuntu are available here: https://code.launchpad.net/~dosemu2/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Binary packages for fedora are here: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/stsp/dosemu2

Binary packages for OpenSUSE are here: https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/stsp2/openSUSE_Tumbleweed

Please send bug reports to https://github.com/dosemu2/dosemu2/issues

Just type

dosemu

to run an emulator.

Use

dosemu -E <dos_cmd>

to run <dos_cmd> and exit (add -T to not exit).

Use

dosemu -K <unix_dir> -E <dos_cmd>

or

dosemu <unix_full_path> -- <dos_prog_args>

to run DOS programs from unix directory.

If you want to run the DOS program from a DOS directory, use this syntax:

dosemu -K :C:\\games\\carma -E carma.exe

This will run carma.exe from c:\games\carma. Note the leading colon after -K: it means that the DOS path, rather than unix path, is specified. You can actually specify both paths:

dosemu -K ~/dosgames:carma -E carma.exe

This creates the DOS drive for ~/dosgames, then chdirs to carma and runs carma.exe.

Per-user configuration file can be created as ~/.dosemu/.dosemurc. Add your custom settings there. Look into the global configuration file /etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf for existing settings, their descriptions and default values, and modify the local config accordingly. $_hdimage is probably the first setting to look into, as it configures the host fs access.

Create c:\userhook.sys and/or c:\userhook.bat files to customize your boot sequence. userhook.sys can contain the config.sys directives and userhook.bat can contain custom boot commands.

Drive C: is usually located at ~/.dosemu/drive_c. You can add DOS programs there. Or you can run dosemu -d <unix_dir> to mount the <unix_dir> as a new DOS drive.