I'm not sure you're aware, but DOSBox 0.74 was released 10 years ago. Releases 0.74-2 and 0.74-3 were just small bugfix releases and are missing a lot of work, that were done to DOSBox since 0.74 branch was created.

This 10-year old codebase is so old, that it does not work on my computers any more (it starts, but has severe bugs making games unplayable) - that's why I started work on dosbox-staging.

We (talking for all dosbox-staging maintainers here) are trying to walk fine line between fixing bugs, introducing missing features and rejecting bad ideas, that are often championed by some users; we're working hard to avoid the bloat that brought down other dosbox forks over the years.

If you have some constructive ideas about where dosbox-staging should go (or any problems with using it), I will be happy to hear about them in our issue tracker :)

You can find links to stable 0.75.0 builds here.

Links to unstable 0.76.0 alpha builds

Thanks for those links.

This is nice of you to do for those that need it or want the new features. :)

That said, the old version seems to work fine for a good number of people(myself included)...even on Win 10. I mean heck that's why(afaik) GOG still uses it for their games(which use dosbox).

If it works for you, then great - keep using it, this thread is perhaps not for you :)

I was under the impression, that GOG uses patched versions of DOSBox builds tailored to fix bugs in specific games. When the dosbox is broken for some game - they simply *do not release that game* or sometimes release hacked version for Windows only. I could spend quite a long time explaining various bugs and problems, but maybe instead: here's a list of bigger issues we addressed in 0.75.0. And WIP 0.76.0 release has more lined up already.

Using dosbox-staging I was able to make a number of Windows-only GOG releases work perfectly on Linux. In fact, they work better on Linux now than original GOG releases do on Windows - e.g. I have pixel-perfect scaling, resizable window support, full-screen splash-screen (which will be user-configurable in 0.76.x), shaders, support for CD-DA audio stored as FLAC files (for better quality than ogg/mp3 used in GOG releases) or Opus (for better quality AND smaller file size than ogg/mp3 used in GOG releases) no input issues when using Wayland, etc, etc…

I believe most dosbox games here use slightly modified(mostly conf file edits and such) copies of dosbox 74. And i'm guessing it must work for most if GOG keeps using it.

Plus (no offense meant by this bit) a good number of older gamers or purists likely don't want or need the extra stuff. It (and this) is likely nice for those that want such, though.

Judging by reactions this release provoked in various forums (various subreddits, regional forums), I would say - quite the opposite :)

Also - I believe dosbox should not be "only for older users" or "only for purists".

I meant here in this forum and community specifically.

Never said it should be. Just was trying to infer that many don't likely need such extras....which is likely true.

It is akin to this: some people want a super fancy McBurger Deluxe with a ton of toppings, while for many a plain burger with a few condiments is good enough.

Of course for some that want such that is fine...just not my thing(atm anyways).

(Plus with all those extra features it becomes more likely over time that the program will get bloated and/or possibly cause issues for some who try to use it)

Anyways I am glad you're making or maintaining this for people that might want it. That is a nice thing for you to do, and I wish you luck with it and your future work on it.

I'm going to hurl some praise here for DOSbox Staging and the fact that it A: Has a really spiffy logo (I never was too fond of the woodsy box icon), and B: That it runs natively on Fedora, which is a delightful contrast compared to TRAVIS BUILT programs like OpenRCT2.

Causing idiotic dependencies such as requiring libzip.so.4 and exactly that version.

Rather than libzip.so.5.1, which is what is currently installed.

You can see how this could be a problem. Or requiring libfiles that literally do not exist in most distroes such as libduktape or libicuuc.

dosbox-staging 0.75.1 released:
release notes,
GOG forum thread