FreeDOS on QEMU

Following with my recent explorations around running vintage operating systems on various virtualization platforms, I’ve recently tried to run FreeDOS on QEMU, and these are the steps I followed. Sources: Wikibooks and QEMU QED.

  1. Install QEMU:
    • sudo dnf install qemu
  2. Download FreeDOS:
    • wget https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-LiveCD.zip
  3. Extract the FD13LIVE.iso file from the downloaded distribution using the command:
    • unzip FD13-LiveCD.zip
  4. Create a disk image for FreeDOS:
    • qemu-img create -f raw freedos.img 5G
  5. Start the installation process:
    • qemu-system-i386 -drive file=freedos.img -m 16 -vga cirrus -net nic,model=pcnet -cdrom FD13LIVE.iso -boot d
  6. Launch FreeDOS on QEMU:
    • qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 32 -hda dos.vmdk -cdrom FD13LIVE.iso -boot order=c
  7. Finally, use FDIMPLES to install more FreeDOS software.

All of this works, but to be honest, it’s very slow, much slower than on VirtualBox, for example.