Have you ever tried using 86box as an alternative to VirtualBox? You can use frontend like WinBox for a more user friendly experience. You can choose almost any graphics driver ever existed to emulate.
No I haven’t heard of it. Seems like it’s what I’m looking for. I’ll definitely give it a shot.
I don’t have a specific game to run, I’d like to install all games I played as a kid and I prefer to start with an install that supports games the most.
I actually use virtual box as my work pc. So my work and personal is separated.
I can easily backup/snapshot my work machine or move my work VM to another physical machine. Same using a VM to run any archived games you might find online that may have hidden malware that kills your main machine.
Connecting to work VPN within a VM and free to listen to music streams or Netflix in my main desktop without receiving any angry IT emails from work.
Because my main laptop(win8) is now overdue for replacement I am thinking to install Linux and VirtualBox and just run it as a VM server.
Playing anything via virtualbox is... rough. If it's a DOS game, try dosbox or something similar. If you really need DX... whatever win98 used... then setting up a very specific Wine instance is the way to go.
If you're serious about the nostalgia, then your best bet is to find a 32-bit processor and build a dedicated win98 system. ISOs are available everywhere, most with updates and a disabled registration system. You might even try a 2k or XP system. Win2K was my gaming system of choice for many years, thanks to its backward-compatibility.
I agreed it is a bit of overhead to install and update the OS in the VM, but once setup its easy to snapshot or copy the VM.
So if I install a game that doesn't work out I just roll back.
I have tried Wine over the years and although it's getting better I am a dos and windows native. Linux on the side with the manual or Google open. 🤪