Well, if nothing beats the real thing, then I would go with the original DOS version and run it through Dosbox.

I've got a copy of this myself with 3 different color patches that were applied to it by a buddy of mine.

It looks really great and doesn't affect any of the gameplay.

If there is someplace that I could upload it, I'd be more than willing to do so.

Well, I personally don't care too much for Nethack on OS 2008. It's a pretty crappy build with too many scroll bars and no on screen keyboard. Sorry Joseph.

There is always using Telnet and going to nethack.alt.org.

The problem with this though is that the number keys are upside down and I can't get a good font with the standard Xterm program that comes with 2008, that and the keyboard takes up a good chunk of the screen as well.

In my opinion, that absolute best option (perhaps only a possibility) is to find a great font for Xterm, going to nethack.alt.org (if you have wireless internet at home) using Telnet, only use the rotated screen option (which I still haven't figured out how to do).

With the screen rotated, I think this would produce the best looking version to play.

The only problem that I can think of for this would be setting up the custom options in your game's configuration profile thingie for playing Nethack online.

There are some really intense options that I don't know much about, such as:
align_message, align_status, ascii_map, color, eight_bit_tty, font_map, font_menu, font_message, font_status, font_text, font_size_map, font_size_menu, font_size_message, font_size_status, font_size_text, fullscreen, hilite_pet, large_font, map_mode, mouse_support, player_selection, popup_dialog, preload_tiles, scroll_amount, scroll_margin, softkeyboard, splash_screen, tiled_map, tile_file, tile_height, tile_width, use_inverse, vary_msgcount, windowcolors, wraptext, and on some operating systems, altkeyhandler, altmeta, BIOS, flush, MACgraphics, page_wait, rawio, soundcard, subkeyvalue, video, videocolors, videoshades.

I'm sure if you can figure out a good way to have the game displayed on a rotated screen, then this is definitely the way to go.

I would love it if someone could figure out the options and a good sized screen font to have the game played so that the character was in the middle of the screen at all times.

Basically, every time you move, the map moves instead of your character. I'm pretty sure this can be done, but I don't know how. Perhaps you could always go visit the people on IRC in Freenode.

Hope that makes some sense.

Well, sorry for such a long winded post.

You have my apologies.