It took me a while to get Red Alert and the expansion Counterstrike working correctly on Ubuntu. I wanted to use a nocd patch, but unfortunately I could not find a working one that also works with Counterstrike. I tried Cedega and Wine and they both did not work completely. Sometimes the CD could not be found or Counterstrike could not be installed etc.. The solution was: dosbox!

Note: Red alert has a DOS and a Windows95 version. I installed the DOS version, which has a great installer (ow sweet, fond memories)
Some general dosbox tips:

• Mount a CD: “mount D D:\ -t cdrom”
• Mount a CD (if it is not recognized by Red Alert correctly): “mount D D:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0″
• Capture/Release the mouse (if you need to use the mouse within DOSBox): CTRL + F10
• Umount: “mount -u d:”
• Switch to full-screen (and back): ALT + ENTER

How do you get Red Alert working with dosbox on your computer?

1. Make images of the original CD’s since nocd patches will get you nowhere. (only if you do not want to use the original CD’s)

cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --datafile game_name.bin --device /dev/scd0 --driver generic-mmc-raw game_name.toc

2. Create a custom dosbox directory

mkdir dosbox_redalert

3. Start dosbox and mount your dosbox directory and CD image

mount c: /home/swat/dosbox_redalert/
imgmount d: /home/swat/redalert.bin -t iso

4. Install Red Alert and any expansions. I installed Counterstrike after installing Red Alert.

d:
setup

5. If you want, you can patch the game to any version (I installed the 1.08 patch). The patch will first ‘unarchive’ itself and then you will have to copy the PATCH.* files to the Red Alert directory and run the patching wizard.
Enjoy the good old feeling of Red Alert!