eXoDOS For Linux - Setup Guide & First Impressions

The eXoDOS Linux patch is here, and Lawnie finally gets his hands on it! In this setup guide and first impressions review, he runs down both how to convert the eXoDOS collection to Linux and how to use the new pre-bundled eXoDOS Launcher specially written for Linux. He then gives the resulting setup a test drive and provides his first impressions as well as some potential workarounds/fixes.

[Vanessaira-Retro]

Great guide and video as always Lawnie.

[jasonfrowe]

Thanks for the nice video. I went down the rabbit hole of trying a native install, gave up and went for flatpacks on an Arch based system.

[KineticEgg]

kinda not using exodos itself, but I am hand picking titles I would actually play to get the best nostalgia hit from their impressive archive. Simply doing an easy repack of their zips to work with DOSBox Pure, either through the Linux stand-alone, or through the Retroarch core, giving, well me at least, less headaches on setting up the titles that need tweaking. Also means no extra DOSBox installs cluttering the system, 500gb+ space vanishing, flatpaks or possible system breaks on update. Everything scrapes perfectly through Emulation Station Desktop edition and Skraper, and so far everything I've tried runs perfectly. Nice vid ;) Cheers

[roberto]

The exoDOS project is so massive it's hard to believe it. The downside is that with, I don't know, 10.000 titles comprising of 95% you won't want to play, and most of the ones you'll want to have source ports or modern releases. Although it still leaves a fair amount of good ones, as you mentioned, licensed and others that, to this day had no attention or will never be released. In the end, once the user gets rid of what he finds uninteresting, then it's more like it. It's like MAME and it's 10.000 games, when, in the end you'll want no more than 200 or 300 hundred at best in a collection.

[Eli-kttd]

Thanks for the info, I wonder if this will work on the Steamdecks flavor of Linux. It's based on arch, so hopefully.
I'll let you know sometime after Q2 ;)

[GenesHand]

Little question, do you think that it would be possible to make all the games run at their native resolution? I want to install this in a dedicated PC with a CRT monitor (The PC is modern but I have a GPU with analog output on it for the CRT)

[callisoncaffrey]

I don't get this. Don't we just need the games? What's with this interface gui stuff? Or is there something special about them so they don't just run in Dosbox?

[samuelbanya]

What Linux distro did you use for this?

[Cyberbrickmaster]

I came to this video in hopes to hear about how to get eXoDOS running on Steam Deck, and on an Intel CPU computer that can't handle running Launchbox for some reason. Unfortunately, I'm unable to get the terminal working on Steam Deck, and just hoped there would be a way to run these games in an Emulation Station frontend, like Emudeck or Retrobat.
If there is an alternative way to run Windows 3.1 games that I can run through said frontends instead of Launchbox, whether it be on Linux or Windows, I'd really appreciate it. No disrespect to the creators of eXoDOS though. They have put a lot of work into this for sure. I just don't know how I'm able to successfully pull all this off without having to just resort to Launchbox as a frontend.
Then again, considering this video is two years old, I'm not sure what progress has been done with it since. Sorry, I'm just new to trying this stuff out and don't claim to know what I'm doing.

[samuelbanya]

Honestly, these games are so old that its such a strawman argument to argue against preserving DOS games. Shouldn't even be an issue. Anyone who doesn't believe this should look for old Carmack quotes where he literally has said he pirated Ultima back in the day.

[ukaszbeben]

Thank for video. Somebody try copy/paste files from pc version to linux? I don't want to redownload it...