DOSBox-X
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 20 emulators by recommenders
Free fork of DOSBox that adds features and accuracy, widely recommended for running old DOS and Windows games with little setup or upkeep.
Free fork of DOSBox that adds features and accuracy, widely recommended for running old DOS and Windows games with little setup or upkeep.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
More features than vanilla DOSBox
“DOSBox does a pretty fantastic job, as long as you use a fork with useful features like DOSBox-X.”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Games Preservation Is Hard and Sometimes Involves Private Detectives” “DOSBox-X is a port that is actively developed and has many features missing in vanilla DOSBox.”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Rebecca Heineman has died” “forks like DOSBox-X have made tremendous progress in compatibility and accuracy”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs” Fast and performant on heavy games
“DOSBox-X does a very good job even for late and heavy dos games and is far more performant.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “86Box v5.3” “the raw performance you can get with DosBOX-X with the dynamic recompiled”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “Porting 3D Movie Maker to Linux” Stable, runs games without fuss
“know those games will always Just Work and I will never have to reinstall anything or mess with configurations”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive” “(specifically DOSBox, or DOSBox-X) is such a fantastic and stable virtual machine”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Writing FreeDOS Programs in C” “runs natively and works great for everything I've thrown at it”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs” - Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Play your favorite DOS retro games on mac”
- Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “OpenCiv1 – open-source rewrite of Civ1”
Built-in GUI and config commands
“DOSBox-X has a GUI to setup options while the emulator is running which is very convenient”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs” “Nice thing with DOSBox-X is there is a built-in command to set config parameters”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs”
Other emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 20 emulators, rankedWhat people said
24 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I managed to have a local Qwen 3.8 instance play M&M2 fairly successfully using dosbox-x and MCP”
“See archive.org, eXoDOS, or eBay and DOSBox-X.”
“it would probably have made more sense to just run the original binaries in DOSBox-X”
“It is easier to run them in DOSBOX-X than vibe code them.”
“DOSBox (or DosBox-X) is fantastic”
“Works for me in DOSBox-X atleast.”
“you need to use DosBox-X with the 'cpu cputype=8086' parameter”
“I believe Dosbox-X had native Apple Silicon support…at least it has an Apple Silicon installer.”
“forks like DOSBox-X have made tremendous progress in compatibility and accuracy”
“runs natively and works great for everything I've thrown at it”
“DOSBox-X has a GUI to setup options while the emulator is running which is very convenient”
“Ooh, that is really great to know - thank you! I will start with that first”
“Nice thing with DOSBox-X is there is a built-in command to set config parameters”
“the raw performance you can get with DosBOX-X with the dynamic recompiled”
“Once set up there is no maintenance.”
“dosbox(-x) can play all windows games up to those which require ME”
“which can run any non nt windows version and has support for 3d acceleration”
“I've had some success with installing windows in dosbox-x which has glide support. Faster and more lightweight than pcem/86box”
“DosBox-X works perfectly for old retro games”
“know those games will always Just Work and I will never have to reinstall anything or mess with configurations”
“DOSBox-X does a very good job even for late and heavy dos games and is far more performant.”
“DOSBox-X is a port that is actively developed and has many features missing in vanilla DOSBox.”
“DOSBox does a pretty fantastic job, as long as you use a fork with useful features like DOSBox-X.”
“(specifically DOSBox, or DOSBox-X) is such a fantastic and stable virtual machine”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.