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DOSBox-X Installation and Released Packages

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.

The current version of DOSBox-X at this time is DOSBox-X 0.83.6, which was released on September 30, 2020. Pre-compiled Windows binaries (both 32-bit and 64-bit), Linux RPM packages (64-bit), macOS packages (64-bit) and the special HX-DOS packages (for real DOS environments) are officially available, as well as the source code packages. You will find DOSBox-X versions that have been released so far (ZIP or RPM packages) and change logs for these versions in the Releases page. The Windows installers are also available (see the next section for details).

See also: DOSBox-X 0.83.6 Release Notes

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)

You probably want to use the all-in-one Windows installation 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. The Windows installer for the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6 is available from:

The Windows installers for recent DOSBox-X versions are also available from:

Apart from the Windows installers, you can usually find three zip packages 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, MinGW 32-bit and MinGW 64-bit (or mingw-w64). For the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6, these portable builds are separately available from:

The Visual Studio builds are available as zip packages for most versions; they are the default Windows builds to use, but they only run on Windows Vista and later (Windows 7, 8, and 10). The MinGW builds will be required if you are running Windows XP. You may also want to use one of the MinGW builds (plain, lowend, etc) if you encounter specific problem(s) with the Visual Studio builds. In addition, while the SDL1 version is the default version, the SDL2 version may be prefered over the SDL1 version for certain features (particularly related to input handling) such as touchscreen input support.

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, x64, ARM and ARM64 (either SDL1 or SDL2 version), which are the build platforms. For MinGW builds, the targets are plain MinGW SDL1 build (mingw), MinGW build for lower-end systems (mingw-lowend), MinGW SDL2 build (mingw-sdl2) and MinGW build with custom drawn menu (mingw-sdldraw). 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. Unlike the Windows installer version however, there is no documentation included in these packages, and you may not see all such packages for some DOSBox-X versions.

Linux Packages (RPM)

RPM packages are officially released for the Linux operating system (64-bit, with X11), specifically for CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 ("el7") and CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 ("el8") platforms. There are usually packages for both CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 platforms, but for the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6 they are not officially available. However, you can try the following unofficial zipped RPM package (version 0.83.5):

For the previous version 0.83.4 the following CentOS 7 RPM packages are available (no CentOS 8 RPM packages):

The last DOSBox-X version that provided official packages for both CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 platforms was version 0.83.2, which included the following Linux RPM packages:

Pick a RPM package of the version you want to use for your Linux platform and install. On CentOS, RHEL or Fedora platforms, you can install a 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 builds (the last three packages in the above example) 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.

If you use a Linux platform that only supports DEB packages, such as Debian, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint, then you can convert the RPM package you want to install to DEB format by using the alien command-line tool, e.g. sudo alien <filename>.rpm, which will generate the DEB package for use with your Linux platform from the RPM package. You will need to install the alien tool first if it is not yet installed on your Linux system.

Moreover, you can find DOSBox-X on SnapCraft (https://snapcraft.io/dosbox-x), which maintains universal Linux packages for software including DOSBox-X. Please note the DOSBox-X Linux packages on this website are built and updated by SnapCraft instead of the DOSBox-X Team.

macOS Packages (Portable)

If you use macOS as your operating system, we also release portable packages for the macOS (64-bit) platform. For the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6, the official macOS package is available as a zip package:

The macOS package requires 64-bit macOS operating system. It should run natively on the recent versions of macOS such as macOS 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" inside the zip file. You can select either SDL1 or SDL2 version according to your preference.

If your system version is macOS Sierra (10.12), macOS High Sierra (10.13), or macOS Mojave (10.14), and you find that the official DOSBox-X binaries included in the above package do not run on your system, then you can try the alternative portable binaries in the following packages (version 0.83.5) instead:

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.

DOS Packages (Portable)

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, although not all features of DOSBox-X that are available in other platforms can be supported in this environment. For the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6, the special DOS version is available in the following zip package:

The DOS package allows you to run DOSBox-X in a real DOS system (MS-DOS 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.

Note: You may not see DOS packages for some DOSBox-X versions. For example, the DOS package is not available for DOSBox-X version 0.83.1.

Source Code Packages (zip or tar.gz)

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. For the current DOSBox-X version 0.83.6, the source code packages are:

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, and in this example the current DOSBox-X 0.83.6 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 DOSBox-X source code description file for detailed instructions on building the DOSBox-X source code and further information of the source code.