[KLUG Members] another box to linux?

[Adam Williams]

> I have an opportunity to recommend that a client change their Windows 
> box to a Linux box.  Lots of good reasons (mostly the incessant 
> Microsoft vulnerabilities), of course, but one gotcha.
> They have an old DOS-based (!) app that they have to be able to run on 
> this machine.  They actually run it as a shortcut over the network. 
> That is, they have a link on their desktop that refers to this program 
> on another Win machine.  The program will not run correctly on Windows 
> if I copy the program to this box because the data is still on the other 
> machine, where it has to stay.  So, this box just maps the network drive 
> and uses a shortcut to the program on it.

Yikes!

> Long story short, is there any chance I could make this box Linux and 
> still make that program run?  I have a Linux box on the network already 
> I can use for testing.  Any advice, recommendations?

There is/was a packaged called DOSEMU that ran M$-DOS apps on Linux.  In 
fact it ran just about darn near everything back-in-the-day when I had to 
use it.  And there was an article in LJ once about an entire hotel chain 
that ran terminal emulation sessions to a Linux box running multiple 
DOSEMU sessions in order to make a DOS reservation app multi-user 
(scary!).

I don't know if modern distros even package dosemu anymore, but it is 
certainly worth a look.

Of course you'll need to smbmount that remote volume too - AND - make sure 
they don't turn off the machine in the middle of your DOSEMU session.