DOS Subsystem for Linux - like WSL, but for DOS

guest · Sep 27, 2020

DOS Subsystem for Linux breaks cover
September 23, 2020
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dos-subsystem-for-linux-breaks-cover-553747

A software engineer in Melbourne is whiling away the city’s lockdown by creating a tool that DOS users so far have lacked: an integrated Linux environment similar to what Windows 10 users enjoy.

Charlie Somerville told iTnews that he developed the DOS Subsystem for Linux (DSL) as he enjoys system programming and has an interest in retro computing, expecially 1990s Microsoft DOS and Windows things.
Inspired by Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Somerville wrote DSL as an amusement.

"I first started out just seeing if I could get Linux booting from the DOS command line, and that turned out to be straightforward enough so I thought it'd be fun to see if I could continue executing DOS once Linux was running," Somerville said.
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DSL runs a real copy of MS-DOS under the QEMU virtual machine, and starts up from that, Somerville said.

"Helpfully Linux seems to leave the first megabyte of memory (where DOS lives) intact during its own boot process, so it's just a matter of jumping back to the right place to continue DOS execution," he added.
Somerville had it pointed out to him that this approach of running DOS under vm8086 is actually how early Windows worked.

"Kinda cool to rediscover the technique so many years later," Somerville said.
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DSL is available on the Github open source code repository, and has been tried out with MS-DOS 6.22 and FreeDOS.
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DOS Subsystem for Linux

Run Linux programs on DOS
A WSL alternative for users who prefer an MS-DOS environment. DOS Subsystem for Linux integrates a real Linux environment into MS-DOS systems, allowing users to make use of both DOS and Linux applications from the DOS command prompt.
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DOS Subsystem for Linux - like WSL, but for DOS

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