DOSBox-X is a cross-platform DOS emulator based on DOSBox, with the eventual goal of being a complete DOS emulation package. New versions of DOSBox-X are released periodically, typically on the last day of a month or the first day of the next month. Since DOSBox-X is cross-platform, all major host operating systems are officially supported including Windows (XP or later), Linux (with X11), macOS (10.12 or later) and DOS operating systems.
For the latest version of DOSBox-X, pre-compiled Windows binaries (both 32-bit and 64-bit), Linux Flatpak and RPM packages (64-bit), macOS packages (64-bit) and DOS packages (for real DOS environments) are officially available, as well as the Windows installers and source code packages. You will find the current DOSBox-X version in the DOSBox-X homepage, and DOSBox-X versions released so far (ZIP or Flatpak/RPM packages) and change logs for these versions in the Releases page.
For most packages there are both SDL1 and SDL2 builds of DOSBox-X, and most features are the same for both builds. While SDL1 builds may be the default one to use, you may want to try SDL2 builds if you want certain features specific to SDL2 builds (such as the raw mouse input option) or you encounter specific issue(s) with SDL1 builds (such as incorrect keys in some international keyboard layouts).
Once you get DOSBox-X installed and running, you probably want to look at the DOSBox-X user guide in the DOSBox-X Wiki for usage information.
- Windows Packages (Installer or Portable)
- Linux Packages (Flatpak and more)
- macOS Packages (Portable)
- DOS Packages (Portable)
- Source Code Packages (zip or tar.gz)
You probably want to use the Windows installer packages for the ease of installation, which are especially recommended for new and non-expert users. With the installer the installation process will be automated while allowing you to change the install folder and the default build to run if you prefer (and the option to install all builds to subdirectories), so that you will be able to start DOSBox-X as soon as the installation ends. A quick start guide is also included in the package, and shell context menus can be automatically added for a fast launch of DOSBox-X from the Windows Explorer. Windows installers are available from the DOSBox-X homepage.
If you see the message Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting when running an installer, you can solve it by clicking the link "More info" in the dialog and then "Run anyway".
You can easily upgrade from a previous version of DOSBox-X to the new version with the Windows installer. The Windows installer in fact offers an option to automatically upgrade the config file (dosbox-x.conf) to the new version format while keeping all the user-customized settings already made. When you select this (recommended), the config file will include all options of the latest DOSBox-X version and also will keep all the changes already done previously by the user.
Apart from the Windows installers, you can find seven zip packages (six before 0.84.1) for each DOSBox-X version for the Windows platform in the Releases page as an alternative way to install DOSBox-X. These zip files are portable packages containing binaries built with Visual Studio 2019 (Win32, Win64, ARM32, ARM64 respectively), MinGW (Win32, Win32-lowend, Win64 respectively). Look for zip files starting with "dosbox-x-vsbuild-" and "dosbox-x-mingw-win" in the Releases page.
The Visual Studio builds are the default Windows builds to use, which include the debugger. On the other hand, standard MinGW builds of DOSBox-X support the Slirp backend for the NE2000 networking but won't run on Windows XP/Vista. You may also want to use one of the MinGW builds if you encounter specific problem(s) with the Visual Studio builds (such as floating point precision issues). In addition, while DOSBox-X provides both SDL1 and SDL2 versions and the former is the default version, the SDL2 version may be preferred over the SDL1 version for certain features (particularly related to input handling) such as better international keyboard support.
- If you need Windows XP support, you can use either the Visual Studio XP builds (but not the standard Visual Studio builds) or the 32-bit MinGW low-end builds (but not the standard MinGW builds).
- If you need Windows Vista support, you can use either Visual Studio builds or the 32-bit MinGW low-end builds (but not the standard MinGW builds).
If you prefer to use one of the portable packages, please select the zip package you want to download for your platform and unzip, then you will find various folders or subdirectories, which are some supported targets. For Visual Studio builds, these correspond to Win32 (x86), Win64 (x64), ARM32 and ARM64 (either SDL1 or SDL2 version), which are the build platforms. For MinGW builds, the targets are the standard MinGW SDL1 build (mingw), the standard MinGW SDL2 build (mingw-sdl2), and the 32-bit MinGW lowend SDL1 and SDL2 builds (mingw-lowend and mingw-lowend-sdl2 respectively). Go to a target folder for your platform and run dosbox-x.exe inside it, then DOSBox-X will be launched and ready to be used. It is recommended to use the Windows installers for more complete installations.
DOSBox-X is available packaged in the below formats. You can select the one that best matches your Linux system and your needs.
Flatpak packages are officially released for the Linux operating system (with X11 or Xwayland).
The Linux Flatpak package has the advantage of being supported by most Linux distributions, but it will run in a sandbox on your Linux system so that you may not be able to access some system-wide resources.
For the current DOSBox-X version the Linux Flatpak is available from:
You may need to install Flatpak support depending on your Linux distribution for the first time. Please see the Quick Setup page for more information specific to your Linux platform. The DOSBox-X Flathub page is also available from here.
Once Flatpak support is enabled on your Linux system you can install the DOSBox-X Flatpak with the following command:
flatpak install flathub com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X
Alternatively, you can install the DOSBox-X Flatpak locally if you downloaded the com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X.flatpakref file to your computer:
flatpak install --from com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X.flatpakref
After it is installed, it can be run with:
flatpak run com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X
By default some system-wide resources will not be accessible by any Flatpak package. But you can give the DOSBox-X Flatpak package additional access using the --filesystem option. For example, to give it access to the /mnt directory:
flatpak run --filesystem=/mnt com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X
In addition, if an earlier DOSBox-X Flatpak is already installed in the system you can update it to the current version with the command:
flatpak update com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X
Or just flatpak update to update all installed Flatpak packages.
RPM is a packaging format used by a variety of Linux distributions. The current DOSBox-X version is offered via Fedora Copr here:
This supports the following Linux distributions:
- Fedora Linux (current versions plus rawhide)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 with EPEL
- CentOS 8 with EPEL.
Unlike a traditional package download, copr allows for the package to be automatically updated when the next release is available.
In addition, but this is not recommended, some RPM packages for older DOSBox-X version are available for CentOS in the DOSBox-X Github under Releases. Simply pick the RPM package(s) for the version you want to use for your Linux platform and install. On CentOS, RHEL or Fedora platforms, you can install an RPM package with a command line like this:
sudo rpm -i <filename>.rpm
Where <filename> is the main file name of the RPM package you wish to install. You may want to use the debug build if you desire to do some debugging work when running DOSBox-X. If there are missing dependencies for the rpm command, such as libpng and fluid-soundfont, then you will need to install them first. However, RPM packages are not natively supported by Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint (although the alien command may sometimes help). In such case you probably want to use the Flatpak package, which works independent of your Linux distribution.
You can find DOSBox-X on SnapCraft (https://snapcraft.io/dosbox-x), which maintains universal Linux packages for software including DOSBox-X. But please note the DOSBox-X Linux packages on this website are built and updated by SnapCraft instead of the DOSBox-X Team.
DOSBox-X is packaged for archlinux, and available in the user contributed AUR Package Repository. But please note that this package is not built or updated by the DOSBox-X Team.
- SDL1 build: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dosbox-x/
- SDL2 build: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dosbox-x-sdl2/
If you use macOS as your operating system, we also release portable packages for the macOS (64-bit) platform. The official macOS packages for the latest DOSBox-X version are available from the DOSBox-X homepage.
The macOS package requires 64-bit Intel or ARM-based macOS operating system. It should run natively on the recent versions of macOS such as macOS Monterey (12), Big Sur (11), and Catalina (10.15). Both SDL1 and SDL2 binaries (in .app format) are provided in the macOS package, in the directories named dosbox-x and dosbox-x-sdl2 respectively inside the zip file. While the SDL1 version is the default version, the SDL2 version may be preferred over the SDL1 version for certain features (particularly related to input handling) such as touchscreen input support. You can select either SDL1 or SDL2 version according to your preference, or just run the SDL1 version if you are not sure.
There are two ways to run DOSBox-X in macOS, either from the Finder or from the command-line (Terminal):
-
From the Finder, go to the directory where the macOS zip package is downloaded, you will see a folder name which is the same as the file name of the downloaded zip package. Inside this folder you will see
dosbox-x(SDL1) anddosbox-x-sdl2(SDL2). Go to either one and click the program "dosbox-x" to start DOSBox-X. If you see a dialog asking you to select a folder, please select one which will then become your DOSBox-X working directory. You can choose to save this folder after you select one so that the folder selection dialog will no show up again next time, or let DOSBox-X show the folder selection dialog every time you run it from the Finder. -
From the Terminal, go to the directory where the macOS zip package is downloaded, you will see a folder name which is the same as the file name of the downloaded zip package. Starting from this folder, use
cdcommand to go to the directory where the DOSBox-X executable is located. For SDL1 build, typecd dosbox-x/dosbox-x.app/Contents/MacOS, and for SDL2 build, typecd dosbox-x-sdl2/dosbox-x.app/Contents/MacOS. Run DOSBox-X with./dosbox-xand you will see the DOSBox-X window.
If you see the message "dosbox-x" is damaged and can't be opened when trying to run DOSBox-X, you should be able to solve the problem by running the following command once in the Terminal and you are in the directory in which the macOS zip package is extracted (where you can find two folders including dosbox-x and dosbox-x-sdl2):
xattr -cr dosbox-x/dosbox-x.app dosbox-x-sdl2/dosbox-x.app
As of DOSBox-X version 0.83.16, the regular macOS builds listed above will run on macOS Catalina (10.15) or later; they include features such as Slirp, FluidSynth and FFmpeg by default and bundle dylib libraries needed for such features.
If you have an older macOS version such as macOS High Sierra (10.13) and Mojave (10.14), or you use a newer macOS version but do not need any additional features provided by external libraries such as libslirp or libfluidsynth, you can use the alternative macOS builds below instead, which include both SDL1 and SDL2 versions of the DOSBox-X (named dosbox-x-sdl1 and dosbox-x-sdl2 respectively in the package). These are intended to be builds for "low-end" systems with no need for external libraries to run them in your macOS. Latest such build is 2022.09.0 (0.84.3).
If you see the message "dosbox-x" is damaged and can't be opened when trying to run the above builds, you should be able to solve the problem by executing the following command (once) in the Terminal and you are in the directory in which the zip package is extracted (where you can find two files including dosbox-x-sdl1 and dosbox-x-sdl2):
xattr -cr .
Then you should be able to run the binary dosbox-x-sdl1 or dosbox-x-sdl2 normally.
macOS versions earlier than 10.12 (Sierra) are not officially supported. If you use an old version such as OS X Lion (10.7) or OS X Yosemite (10.10), then you may try to build and run DOSBox-X yourself with the help of MacPorts. Furthermore, you may not see official macOS packages for some DOSBox-X versions. For example, no official macOS package is available for DOSBox-X version 0.83.1.
Besides Windows, Linux and macOS packages, there are also packages released for the DOS operating system. Yes, DOSBox-X can officially run on DOS systems as well, as some DOS users seem to prefer to run DOS applications and games through a DOS emulator. With DOSBox-X running in DOS you are able to emulate another DOS system with a different PC configuration (such as different machine types, video and sound cards etc) that works better for the purpose of the users. But please note that due to the limitations of this environment not all features of DOSBox-X that are available in other platforms can be supported in the DOS version.
The HX-DOS package allows you to run DOSBox-X in a real DOS system (MS-DOS 5.0+ or compatible) with the help of the freely-available HX DOS Extender, which is already included in the recent DOS release packages. Once you unzip the package you can directly type DOSBOX-X to run in DOS. See the README.TXT file inside the DOS package for more information.
Alternatively, you can run some versions of DOSBox-X (latest is 0.83.25 2022-05-01) from a DOS environment with the help of the free LOADLIN program. With the LOADLIN DOS package you can run DOSBox-X right from DOSBox-X's DOS shell. Start the outside DOSBox-X with the setting memsize=127 and cputype=pentium (perhaps also fullscreen=true and/or autolock=true). Go to the directory where the files are extracted and type DOSBOX-X. Then just wait for DOSBox-X to be automatically loaded within DOSBox-X.
Both DOS packages for the latest DOSBox-X version can be found in the DOSBox-X homepage.
Full source code packages of DOSBox-X are also available in both zip and tar.gz formats. Both contain the full source code, but you probably want to download the source code in zip format if you are using Windows, and the source code in tar.gz format if you are using Linux. The source code packages for the latest DOSBox-X version are available from the DOSBox-X homepage.
If you prefer you can compile DOSBox-X from the source code by yourself. The source code packages as listed in the Releases page contain the source code for that released version. On the other hand, if you are looking for the latest source code of DOSBox-X (including the most recent development changes in the source code), you may want to use the source code in the repository instead, or you can browse the latest source code using Doxygen.
You could use either the released source code package or the latest source code according to your needs, and the source code may be compiled to run on the above-mentioned platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS and DOS) and possibly other operating systems too. Please see the BUILD page for detailed instructions on building the DOSBox-X source code. Further descriptions of the source code can be found in the DOSBox-X source code description file.
The development (preview) builds intended for testing purposes for the supported platforms can be found here.