How to run GW-Basic under Ubuntu?

Question

Well, I suddenly missed GW-Basic very much, so I want to install one in my new Ubuntu box. I have a long time not programmed for GW-Basic, so I don't know if there comes new releases. I copied GWBASIC.EXE from my old DOS 3.3 box, but it seems not start using Wine. I guess it's 16-bit so Wine will not support it.

Is there something like 286 emulator? Or should I have to run some expensive VM like Vmware? Oh no.

Lemmy

Microsoft has put the 1983 source code of GW-BASIC under a free license (MIT) on Github and there are more than 400 forks. So maybe there will be new releases eventually. :-) – Weatherbeaten

Answer 1

DOSbox works for running gwbasic, and many old dos programs.

To install it: sudo apt-get install dosbox

To run it: dosbox gwbasic.exe

Caveats: DOSbox emulates the CPU, so it runs apps slower than on Wine or as a native app. However, anything that originally ran on a 486 should run fine with DOSbox.

Speaking of gwbasic, by default it saves the source in a binary format. You can save in a text format with the a (ascii) switch, like this:

save "filename",a

As far as a basic interpreter that runs gwbasic code on Ubuntu, I haven't found one yet, but I am still looking.

Siberson

Answer 2

PC-BASIC runs your GW-BASIC programs without modification and runs natively on Ubuntu (it's Python-based). Just unpack the tarball and run

pcbasic filename

Neuman

Answer 3

i installed dosbox from synaptic. and GW basic runs perfectly. in fact i tried many dos based programs in my collection, most worked. Dos box gives perfectly the feel of old dos machine

Scaffold

Answer 4

QB64 runs natively on Linux.

REMLINE.BAS is a program to remove line numbers from Microsoft Basic Programs. It removes only those line numbers that are not the object of one of the following statements: GOSUB, RETURN, GOTO, THEN, ELSE, RESUME, RESTORE, or RUN.

Sherrylsherurd

Answer 5

GWBASIC.EXE will run only on a Windows system. You can setup a Windows VM on Ubuntu as mentioned here: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/02/10/run-windows-in-a-virtual-machine-using-ubuntu-and-virtualbox/

Curfew

GWBASIC is a DOS program, not a Windows program. If you're going to bother setting up a VM for DOS, it's best to just set up a DOS VM running MS-DOS or FreeDOS. Or just use DOSBox, which gives most of the benefits of a VM , but uses the native file system (rather than a virtual hard drive.) – Leatherleaf