I wouldn't know, I only use 9p for these kind of things..

9p? Not sure what to make of that. I like to keep old OSes around for various reasons. It can be amusing to see some reactions when my not-too-ancient machine looks like it is running XP to people who don't understand virtual machines. Maybe I'll dig up some old Windows 3.1 discs. and really push the nostalgia. I'll have to create a DOS VM to run it on, though.

I have run Win3.11 using DOSBOX, but it is not easy. Easier using BOX or QEMU I think. FREEDOS is actually easier and runs better, and can run Win3.11 if set up right.

Advantage DOSBOX because some things just work as it presents them. Advantage FREEDOS with Win3 layed down on top IF you can find the drivers you need for network and media devices.

9p is a network filesystem.. I use it for sharing files between the host and guest.. But it probably doesn't work for Windows, fairly sure. Only using 9p is not entirely true, also squashfs (on the guest).

Sounds interesting. I don't like or use Windows, but it happens once in awhile that I run a Windows 7 virtual machine (not really anymore frankly). I still remember the days of using DOS, 3.11 and Windows 95/98 though, and it would be kindof interesting to have a look back in time. Just faint memories, but I'm sure it would bring back some memories to run some of those systems.

I found directions on setting up FREEDOS under QEMU using a raw image file. I'll probably tinker with that at some point. I've used DOSBOX for some old games I have lurking about. I am something of a digital packrat.

As I said above, I am something of a digital packrat. I have no particular liking for Windows either, but dealing with much of the world requires using it in places. One reason for keeping old OSes around is supporting old systems that pop up from time to time. I deal with many people who have Windows, so I have Windows VMs mostly for support reasons and nostalgia. At this point I've retired all the devices that required Windows software to operate or sync. I am still doing the major conversion from VirtualBox to QEMU, but I'll get there. I tend to create and delete VMs for various projects. As an example, I currently have four systems for learning Ansible, one control node and three test servers. I'll get back a fair bit of disk space when I delete those. New systems will be created under QEMU. I'll probably keep VB around for a while until I am certain I have the converted systems working properly.

More updates:

I've been having fun with a form of digital time travel. I've been working my way backwards through OS history.

Windows 7, 2000, NT4, 98, 95, and even 3.1. I haven't found the ME and NT3.5 discs yet, but they're around here somewhere. Probably with the Windows 7 Pro disc I can't find. I figure I can use that to re-register 10, it might not be wise to try and re-register 7.

I've been tinkering with FreeDOS while I've been at it. This led to the discovery that I don't have SoundBlaster support. I'm doing research to see if that is still possible with QEMU 8.x and what setting I may need to use on a re-compile. I also found out that even pulling in the appropriate drivers for the vitual NIC, Windows 98 and 95 can't see the network at all. Not a big deal, I just wanted to see if it would work.

At this point it is down to tinkering for the fun of it. The important items work. It would be interesting to see what my old DOS games make of FreeDOS, but I have DOSbox for those.

Thanks again for all the help.

In the spirit of washing the car to make it rain, once I posted that I had to research SoundBlaster support in QEMU, I stumbled across the detail that it's in there, just not virt-manager accessible in the normal way, I had to go into the XML for the sound card and change it to <sound model="sb16"/> and that addressed the issue. I now have sound in most of the Windows VMs (I am not finished yet, it will probably be all of them when I'm done, the most recent versions already work with the default virtual hardware), even the 3.1 machine running on top of MS-DOS 6.22, and in FreeDOS.

Wheeee!