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Game · Consoles, homebrew & emulation

DOSBox-X

X86/DOS emulator with sound and graphics.

  • Completely free
  • Windows, macOS and Linux
  • Open source
  • No account

Overview

DOSBox-X is a console and retro computer emulator, available on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Overview written by LicitPro from the documentation published by the authors and the cited sources; we have not tried the resource ourselves.

Excerpts that establish this information
  • “x86/DOS emulator with sound and graphics” — Flathub, 10 November 2026

At a glance

All of DOSBox-X is free: no feature is locked behind a paid plan, and its code is open.

Its licence (GPL-2.0) is a copyleft open source licence: you may use, study, modify and redistribute it, including commercially; modified versions must keep the same licence.

Strengths

  • Open source code
  • No account needed
  • Commercial use allowed

About

DOSBox-X is an open-source DOS emulator for running DOS games and applications. DOS-based Windows such as Windows 3.x and Windows 9x are officially supported. Compared to DOSBox, DOSBox-X is much more flexible and provides more features. DOSBox-X emulates a PC necessary for running many DOS games and applications that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, similar to DOSBox. However, while the main focus of DOSBox is for running DOS games, DOSBox-X goes much further than this. Started as a fork of the DOSBox project, it retains compatibility with the wide base of DOS games and DOS gaming DOSBox was designed for. But it is also a platform for running DOS applications, including emulating the environments to run Windows 3.x, 9x and ME and software written for those versions of Windows. By adding official support for Windows 95, 98, and ME emulation and acceleration, we hope that those old Windows games and applications could be enjoyed or used once more. Moreover, DOSBox-X adds support for emulating the NEC PC-98 such that you can also play PC-98 games with it. DOSBox-X emulates a legacy IBM PC and DOS environment, and has many emulation options which you can find documented on the DOSBox-X website.

Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

Sources and checks

  • Facts collected from Flathub (credit card, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Facts collected from Unspecified source (platforms) —
  • Facts collected from Winget (Windows Package Manager) (credit card, account, source code, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Last technical check: 6 November 2026
  • Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

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